PRICE, 50 CENTS. 



■ EDUCATION: 



Iittellectual, Moral, aitd Phys 



BY 



Xerbert sp 



A SYSTEM OF ST 



EDUCATIOISr: 

INf BLLECTUAL, MORAL AND 
PHYSICAL. 

HERBERT SPENCER. 



NEW YORK AND CHICAGO: 
BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. 



48 65 55 

JUL 1 7 W2 



.37 




J. OVEN?, Printer, 11 Vandewater St., N Y. 



Lif 



CONTENTS. 



I. What knowledge is of most worth ?. . 5 
II. Intellectual education 83 

III. Moral education * 149 

IV. Physical education 209 



EDUCATION 



CHAPTER L 

WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH? 

It has been truly remarked that, in order of 
time, decoration precedes dress. Among 
people who submit to great physical suffering 
that they may have themselves handsomely 
tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne 
with but little attempt at mitigation. Hum- 
boldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though 
quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet 
labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment 
wherewith to make himself admired ; and that 
the same woman who would not hesitate to 
leave her hut without a fragment of clothing 
on, would not dare to commit such a breach 
of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers 
uniformly find that colored beads and trinkets 
are much more prized by wild tribes than are 
calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes 
we have of the ways in which, when shirts 
and coats are given, they turn them to some 
ludicrous display, show how completely the 
idea of ornament predominates over that of 
use. Nay, there are still more extreme illus- 
trations : witness the fact narrated by Capt. 



6 EDUCATION, 

Speke of his African attendants, who strutted 
about in their goat-skin mantles when the 
weather was fine, but when it was wet, took 
them off, folded them up, and went about 
naked, shivering in the rain! Indeed, the 
facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that 
dress is developed out of decorations. And 
when we remember that even among ourselves 
most think more about the fineness of the 
fabric than its warmth, and more about the 
cut than the convenience — when we see that 
the function is still in great measure subordi- 
nated to the appearance— we have further rea- 
son for inferring such an origin. 

It is not a little curious that the like rela- 
tions hold with the mind. Among mental as 
among bodily acquisitions, the ornamental 
comes before the useful. Not only in times 
past, but almost as much in our own era, that 
knowledge which conduces to personal well- 
being has been postponed to that which brings 
applause. In the Greek schools, riiisic, 
poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy which, un- 
til Socrates taught, had but little bearing up- 
on action, were the dominant subjects; while 
knowledge aiding the arts of life had a very 
subordinate place. And in our own universi- 
ties and schools at the present moment the 
like antithesis holds. We are guilty of some- 
thing like a platitude when we say that 
throughout his after-career a boy, in nine 
cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek 
to no practical purposes. The remark is trite 
that in his shop, or his office, in managing his 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 7 

estate or his family, in playing his part as 
director of a bank or a railway, he is very 
little aided by this knowledge he took so many 
years to acquire— so little, that generally the 
greater part of it drops out of his memory ; 
and if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation, 
or alludes to some Greek myth, it is less to 
throw light on the topic in hand than for the 
sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real 
motive for giving boys a classical education, 
we find it to be simply conformity to public 
opinion. Men dress their children's minds as 
they do their bodies, in the prevailing fash- 
ion. As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint 
before leaving his hut, not with a view to any 
direct benefit, but because he would be 
ashamed to be seen without it ; so, a boy's drill- 
ing in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not be- 
cause of their mtrinsic value, but that he may 
not be disgraced by being found ignorant of 
them — that he may have " the education of a 
gentleman" — the badge marking a certain 
social position, and bringing a consequent re- 
spect. 

This parallel is still more clearly displayed 
in the case of the other sex. In the treatment 
of both mind and body, the decorative element 
has continued to predominate in a greater de- 
gree among women than among men. Origi- 
nally, personal adornment occupied the atten- 
tion of both sexes equally. In these latter 
days of civilization, however, we see that in 
the dress of men the regard for appearance 
has in a considerable degree yielded to the re- 



8 EDUCATION. 

gard for comfort ; while in their education the 
useful has of late been trenching on the orna- 
mental. In neither direction has this change 
gone so far with women. The wearing of ear- 
rings, finger-rings, bracelets; the elaborate 
dressings of the hair ; the still occasional use 
of paint ; the immense labor bestowed in mak- 
ing habiliments sufficiently attractive; and 
the great discomfort that will be submitted to 
for the sake of conformity ; show how greatly 
in the attiring of women, the desire of appro- 
bation overrides the desire for warmth and 
convenience. And similarly in their educa- 
tion, the immense preponderance of "accom- 
plishments " proves hoAv here, too, use is sub- 
ordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, 
the piano, singing, drawing — ^what a large 
space do these occupy ! If you ask why Ital- 
ian and German are learnt, you will find that 
under all the sham reasons given, the real 
reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues 
is thought ladylike. It is not that the books 
written in them may be utilized, which they 
scarcely ever are ; but that Italian and Ger- 
man songs may be sung, and that the extent 
of attainment may bring whispered admira- 
tion. The births, deaths, and marriages of 
kings, and other like historic trivialities, are 
committed to memory, not because of any di- 
rect benefits that can possibly result from 
knowing them ; but because society considers 
them parts of a good education — because the 
absence of such knowledge may brinn: the con- 
tempt of others. When we have named read- 



KNOWLEDGE OF 310 ST WOBTH. 9 

ing, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, 
and sewing, we have named about all the 
things a girl is tPtUght with a view to their 
direct uses in life; and even some of these 
have more reference to the good opinion of 
others than to immediate personal welfare. 

Thoroughly to realize the truth that with 
the mind as with the body the ornamental 
precedes the useful, it is needful to glance at 
its rationale. This lies in the fact that, from 
the far past down even to the present, social 
needs have subordinated individual needs, 
and that the chief social need has been the 
control of individuals. It is not, as we com- 
monly suppose, that there are no governments 
but those of monarchs, and parliaments, and 
constituted aAithorities. These acknowledged 
governments are supplemented by other un- 
acknowledged ones, that grow up in all cir- 
cles, in which every man or woman strives to 
be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get 
above some and be reverenced by them, and 
to propitiate those who are above us, is the 
universal struggle in which the chief energies 
of life are expended. By the accumulation of 
wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, 
by display of knowledge or intellect, each 
tries to subjugate others ; and so aids in weav- 
ing that ramified network of restraints by 
which society is kept in order. It is not the 
savage chief only, who, in formidable war- 
paint, with scalps at his belt, aims to strike 
awe into his inferiors ; it is not only the belle 
who, by elaborate toilet, polished manners, 



10 EDUCATION. 

and numerous accomplishments, strives to 
"make conquests;" but the scholar, the his- 
torian, the philosopher, use their acquire- 
ments to the same end. We are none of us 
content with quietly unfolding our own indi- 
vidualities to the full in all directions; but 
have a restless craving to impress our indi- 
vidualities upon others, and in some way sub- 
ordinate them. And this it is which deter- 
mines the character of our education. Not 
what knowledge is of most real worth, is the 
consideration ; but what will bring most ap- 
plause, honor, respect — what will most con- 
duce to social position and influence — what 
will be most imposing. As, throughout life, 
not what we are, but what we shall be thought, 
is the question ; so in education, the question 
is, not the intrinsic value of knowledge, so 
much as its extrinsic effects on others. And 
this being our dominant idea, direct utility is 
scarcely more regarded than by the barba- 
rian when filing his teeth and staining his 
nails. 

If there needs any further evidence of the 
rude, undeveloped character of our education, 
we have it in the fact that the comparative 
worths of different kinds of knowledge have 
been as yet scarcely even discussed — much 
less discussed in a methodic way with definite 
results. Not only is it that no standard of 
relative values has yet been agreed upon ; but 
the existence of any such standard has not 
been conceived in any clear manner. And not 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOETR. 11 

only is it that the existence of any such stand- 
ard has not been clearly conceived ; but the 
need for it seems to have been scarcely even 
felt. Men read books on this topic, and at- 
tend lectures on that ; decide that their chil- 
dren shall be instructed in these branches of 
knowledge, and shall not be instructed in 
those; and all under the guidance of mere 
custom, or liking, or prejudice ; without ever 
considering the enormous importance of de- 
termining in some rational way what things 
are really most worth learning. It is true 
that in all circles we have occasional remarks 
on the importance of this or the other order 
of information. But whether the degree of 
its importance justifies the expenditure of the 
time needed to acquire it ; and whether there 
are not things of more importance to which 
the time might be better devoted ; are queries 
which, if raised at all, are disposed of quite 
summarily, according to personal predilec- 
tions. It is true also, that from time to time, 
we hear revived the standing controversy re- 
specting the comparative merits of classics 
and mathematics. Not only, however, is this 
controversy carried on in an empirical man- 
ner, with no reference to an ascertained crite- 
rion ; but the question at issue is totally insig- 
nificant when compared with the general 
question of which it is part. To suppose that 
deciding whether a mathematical or a classi- 
cal education is the best, is deciding what is 
the proper curriculum, is much the same thing 
as to suppose that the whole of dietetics lies 



12 EDUCATION. 

in determining whether or not bread is more 
nutritive than potatoes ! 

The question which we contend is of such 
transcendent moment, is, not whether such or 
such knowledge is of worth, but what is its 
relative worth? When they have named cer- 
tain advantages which a given course of study 
has secured them, persons are apt to assume 
that they have justified themselves: quite 
forgetting that the adequateness of the advan- 
tages is the point to be judged. There is, per- 
haps, not a subject to which men devote at- 
tention that has not some value. A year dili- 
gently spent in getting up heraldry, would 
very possibly give a little further insight into 
ancient manners and morals, and into the 
origin of names. Any one who should learn 
the distances between all the towns in Eng- 
land, might, in the course of his life, find one 
or two of the thousand facts he had acquired 
of some slight service when arranging a jour- 
ney. Gathering together all the small gossip 
of a county, profitless occupation as it would 
be, might yet occasionally help to establish 
some useful fact — say, a good example of he- 
reditary transmission. But in these cases, 
every one would admit that there was no pro- 
portion between the required labor and the 
probable benefit. No one would tolerate the 
proposal to devote some years of a boy's time 
to getting such information, at the cost of 
much more valuable information which he 
might else have got. And if here the test of 
relative value is aiDpealed to and held conclu- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 13 

sive, then should it be appealed to and held 
conclusive throughout. Had we time to mas- 
ter all subjects we need not be particular. To 
quote the old song :— 

Could a man be secure 

That his days would endure 

As of old, for a thousand long years, 

What things might he know I 

What deeds might he do ! 

And all without hm-ry or care. 

"But we that have but span-long lives" 
must ever bear in mind our limited time for 
acquisition. And remembering how nar- 
rowly this time is limited, not only by the 
shortness of life, but also still more by the 
business of life, we ought to be especially so- 
licitous to employ what time we have to the 
greatest advantage. Before devoting years 
to some subject which fashion or fancy sug- 
gests, it is surely wise to Aveigh with great 
care the worth of the results, as compared 
with the worth of various alternative results 
which .the same years might bring if other- 
wise applied. 

In education, then, this is the question of 
questions, which it is high time we discussed 
in some methodic way. The first in impor- 
tance, though the last to be considered, is the 
problem — how to decide among the conflict- 
ing claims of various subjects on our atten- 
tion. Before there can be a rational curricu- 
lum, we must settle which things it most 
concerns us to know; or, to use a word of 
Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete — we 



14 EDUCATION. 

must determine the relative values of knowl- 
edges. 

To this end, a measure of value is the first 
requisite. And happily, respecting the true 
measure of value, as expressed in general 
terms, there can be no dispute. Eveiy one 
in contending for the worth of any particular 
order of information, does so by showing its 
bearmg upon some part of life. In reply to 
the question, " Of what use is it? " the mathe- 
matician, linguist, naturalist, or philosopher, 
explains the way in which his learning bene- 
ficially influences action — saves from evil or 
secures good — conduces to happiness. When 
the teacher of writing has pointed out how 
great an aid writing is to success in business 
— that is, to the obtainment of sustenance — 
that is, to satisfactory living ; he is held to 
have proved his case. And when the collec- 
tor of dead facts (say a numismatist) fails to 
make clear any appreciable effects which 
these facts can produce on human welfare, he 
is obliged to admit that they are compara- 
tively valueless. All then, either directly or 
by implication, appeal to this as the ultimate 
test. 

How to live? — that is the essential question 
for us. Not how to live in the mere material 
sense only, but in the widest sense. The gen- 
eral problem which comprehends every spe- 
cial problem is — the right ruhng of conduct 
in all directions under all circumstances. In 
what way to treat the body ; in what way to 
treat the mind ; in what way to manage our 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOIiTIl. 15 

affairs ; in what way to bring up a family ; 
in what way to behave as a citizen ; in what 
way to utilize all those sources of happiness 
which nature supplies — how to use all our fac- 
ulties to the greatest advantage of ourselves 
and others— how to live completely? And 
this being the great thing needful for us 
to learn, is, by consequence, the great thing 
which education has to teach. To prepare us 
for complete living is the function which ed- 
ucation has to discharge ; and the only ra- 
tional mode of judging of any educational 
course is, to judge in what degree it discharges 
such function. 

This test, never used in its entirety, but 
rarely even partially used, and used then in 
a vague, half conscious way, has to be ap- 
plied consciously, methodically, and through- 
out all cases. It behoves us to set before our- 
selves, and ever to keep clearly in view, com- 
plete living as the end to be achieved; 
so that in bringing up our children we may 
choose subjects and methods of instruction, 
with deliberate reference to this end. Not 
only ought we to cease from the mere un- 
thinking adoption of the current fashion in 
education, which has no better warrant than 
any other fashion; but we must also rise 
above that rude, empirical style of judging 
displayed by those more intelligent people 
who do bestow some care in overseeing the 
cultivation of their children's minds. It 
must not suffice simply to think that such or 
such information will be useful in after life, 



16 EDUCATION. 

or that this kind of knowledge is of more 
practical value than that ; but Ave must seek 
out some process of estimating their respect- 
ive values, so that as far as possible we may 
positively know which are most deserving of 
attention. 

Doubtless the task is difficult — perhaps 
never to be more than approximately achiev- 
ed. But, considering the vastness of the in- 
terests at stake, its difficulty is no reason for 
pusillanimously passing it by ; but rather for 
devoting every energy to its mastery. And 
if we only proceed systematically, we may 
very soon get at results of no smxall moment. 

Our first step must obviously be to classify, 
in the order of their importance, the leading 
kinds of activity which constitute human 
life. They may be naturally arranged into : 
— 1. Those activities Avhich directly minister 
to self-preservation; 2. Those activities 
which, by securing the necessaries of life, in- 
directly minister to self-preservation; 3. 
Those activities which have for their end the 
rearing and discipline of offspring ; 4. Those 
activities which are involved in the mainten- 
ance of proper social and political relations ; 
5. Those miscellaneous activities which make 
up the leisure part of life, devoted to the 
gratification of the tastes and feelings. 

That these stand in something like their 
true order of subordination, it needs no long 
consideration to show. The actions and pre- 
cautions by which, from moment to moment, 
we secure personal safety, must clearly taka 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTII. 17 

precedence of all others. Could there be a 
man, ignorant as an infant of all surrounding 
objects and movements, or how to guide him- 
self among them, he would pretty certainly 
lose his life the first time he went into the 
street : notwithstanding any amount of learn- 
ing he might have on other matters. And as 
entire ignorance in all other directions would 
be less promptly fatal than entire ignorance 
in this direction, it must be admitted that 
knowledge immediately conducive to self-pres- 
ervation is of primary importrmce. 

That next after direct self-preservation 
comes the indirect self-preservation which 
consists in acquiring the means of living, 
none will question. That a man's industrial 
functions must be considered before his pa- 
rental ones, is manifest from the fa5t that, 
speaking generally, the discharge of the pa- 
rental functions is made possible only by the 
previous discharge of the industrial ones. The 
power of self -maintenance necessarily pre- 
ceding the power of maintaining offspring, it 
follows that knowledge needful for self-main, 
tenance has stronger claims than knov/ledge 
needful for family welfare — is second in value 
to none save knowledge needful for immedi- 
ate self-preservation. 

As the family comes before the State in or- 
der of time— as the bringing up of children is 
possible before the State exists, or when it has 
ceased to be, whereas the State is rendered 
possible only by the bringing up of chil- 
dren ; it follows that the duties of the parent 



18 EDUCATION. 

demand closer attention than those of the 
citizen. Or, to use a further argument — 
since the goodness of a society ultimately de- 
pends on the nature of its citizens ; and since 
the nature of its citizens is more modifiable 
by early training than by anything else; 
we must conclude that the welfare of the 
family underlies the welfare of society. And 
hence knowledge directly conducing to the 
first, must take precedence of knowledge di- 
rectly conducing to the last. 

Those various forms of pleasurable occupa- 
tion which fill up the leisure left by graver 
occupations — the enjoyments of music, poe- 
try, painting, etc. — manifestly imply a pre- 
existing society. Not only is a considerable 
development of them impossible without a 
long-established social union ; but their very 
subject-matter consists in great part of so- 
cial sentiments and sympathies. Not only 
does society supply the conditions to their 
growth; but also the ideas and sentiments 
they express. And, consequently, that part 
of human conduct which constitutes good 
citizenship is of more moment than that 
which goes out in accomplishments or exer- 
cise of the tastes; and, in education, prepa- 
ration for the one must rank before prex)a- 
ration for the other. 

Such then, we repeat, is something like the 
rational order of subordination : — That educa- 
tion which prepares for direct self-preserva- 
tion; that which prepares for indirect self- 
preservation ; that which prej^ares for parent- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH, 19 

hood; that which prepares for citizenship; 
that which i)repares for the miscellaneous 
refinements of life. We do not mean to 
say that these divisions are definitely sepa- 
rable. We do not deny that they are in- 
tricately entangled with each other in such 
way that there can be no training for any 
that is not in some measure a training for all. 
Nor do we question that of each division 
there are portions more important than cer- 
tain portions of the preceding divisions : that, 
for instance, a man of much skill in business 
but little other faculty, may fall further be- 
low the standard of complete living than one 
of but moderate power of acquiring money 
but great judgment as a parent ; or that ex- 
haustive information bearing on right social 
action, joined with entire want of ^general 
culture in literature and the fine arts, is less 
desirable than a more moderate share of the 
one joined with some of the other. But, after 
making all qualifications, there still remain 
these broadly -marked divisions; and it still 
continues substantially true that these di- 
visions subordinate one another in the fore- 
going order, because the corresponding di- 
visions of life make one another possible in 
that order. 

Of course the ideal of education is— com- 
plete preparation in all these divisions. But 
failing this ideal, as in our phase of civiliza- 
tion every one must do more or less, the aim 
should be to maintain a due proportion be- 
tween the degrees of preparation in each. 



20 EDUCATION. 

Not exhaustive cultivation in any one, su- 
premely important though it may be— not 
even an exclusive attention to the two, three, 
or four divisions of greatest importance ; but 
an attention to all, — greatest where the value 
is greatest, less where the value is less, least 
where the value is least. For the average 
man (not to forget the cases in which pecul- 
iar aptitude for some one department of 
knowledge rightly makes that one the bread- 
winning occupation) — for the average man, 
we say, the desideratum is, a training that 
approaches nearest to perfection in the things 
which most subserve complete living, and 
falls more and more below perfection in the 
things that have more and more remote 
bearings on complete living. 

In regulating education by this standard, 
there are some general considerations that 
should be ever present to us. The worth of 
any kind of culture, as aiding complete living, 
may be either necessary or more or less con- 
tingent. There is knowledge of intrinsic 
value ; knowledge of quasi-intrinsic value and 
knowledge of conventional value. Such facts 
as that sensations of numbness and tingling 
commonly precede paralysis, that the resist- 
ance of water to a body moving through it 
varies as the square of the velocity, that 
chlorine is a disinfectant, — these, and the 
truths of Science in general, are of intrinsic 
value : they will bear on human conduct ten 
thousand years hence as they do now. The 
extra knowledge of our own language, which 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH, 21 

is given by an acquaintance with Latin and 
Greek, may be considered to have a value 
that is quasi-intrinsic: it must exist for us 
and for other races whose languages owe 
much to these sources; but will last only as 
long as our languages last. While that kind 
of information which, in our schools, usurps 
the name History — the mere tissue of names 
and dates and dead unmeaning events — has a 
conventional value only: it has not the re- 
motest bearing upon any of our actions; and 
is of use only for the avoidance of those un- 
pleasant criticisms which current opinion 
passes upon its absence. Of course, as' those 
facts which concern all mankind tlii'oughout 
all time must be held of greater moment than 
those which concern only a portion of them 
during a limited era, and of far greater mo- 
ment than those which concern only a portion 
of them diu-ing the continuance of a fashion; 
it follows that in a rational estimate, knowl- 
edge of intrmsic wortli must, other things 
equal, tal^e precedence of knowledge tliat is 
of quasi-intrinsic or conventional worth. 

One further j)relmiinary. Acquirement of 
every kind has two values — value as knowl- 
edge and value as discipUne. Besides its use 
for guidance in conduct, the acquisition of 
each order of facts has also its use as mental 
exercise; and its effects as a preparative for 
complete living have to be considered under 
both these heads. 

These, then, are the general ideas with 
which we miLst set out in discussing a currlc- 



22 EDUCATION, '. 

ulum : — Life as divided into several kinds of 
activity of successively decreasing impor- 
tance; the worth of each order of facts as 
regulating these sevei*al kinds of activity, 
intrinsically, quasi-intrinsically, and conven- 
tionally ; and their regulative influences esti- 
mated both as knowledge and discipline. 

Happily, that all-important part of educa- 
tion which goes to secure direct self-preser- 
vation, is in great part already provided for. 
Too momentous to be left to our blundering, 
Nature takes it into her own hands. While 
yet in its nurse's arms, the infant, by hiding 
its face and crying at the sight of a stranger, 
shows the dawning instinct to attain safety 
by flying from that which is unknown and 
may be dangerous ; and when it can walk, 
the terror it manifests if an unfamiliar dog 
comes near, or the screams with which it 
runs to its mother after any startling sight or 
sound, shows this instinct further developed. 
Moreover, knowledge subserving direct self- 
preservation is that which it is chiefly busied 
in acquiring from hour to hour. How to 
balance its body ; how to control its move- 
ments so as to avoid collisions ; what objects 
are hard, and will hurt if struck ; what ob- 
jects are heavy, and injure if they fall on the 
limbs ; which things will bear the weight of 
the body, and which not ; the pains inflicted 
by fire, by missiles, by sharp instruments — 
these, and various other pieces of informa- 
tion needful for the avoidance of death or ac- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH, 23 

cident, it is ever learning. And when, a few 
years later, the energies go out in running, 
climbing, and jumping, in games of strength 
and games of skill, we see in all these actions 
by which the muscles are developed, the per- 
ceptions sharpened, and the judgment 
quickened, a preparation for the safe con- 
duct of the body among surrounding objects 
and movements; and for meeting those 
greater dangers that occasionally occur in 
the lives of all. Being thus, as we say, so 
well cared for by Nature, this fundamental 
education needs comparatively little care 
from us. What we are chiefly called upon to 
see, is, that there shall be free scope for gain- 
ing this experience, and receiving this disci- 
pline,— that there shall be no such thwarting 
of Nature as that by which stupid schoolmis- 
tresses commonly prevent the girls in their 
charge from the spontaneous physical activi- 
ties they would indulge in; and so render 
them comparatively incapable of taking care 
of themselves in circumstances of peril. 

This, however, is by no means all that is 
comprehended in the education that prepares 
for direct self-preservation. Besides guard- 
ing the body against mechanical damage or 
destruction, it has to be guarded against in- 
jury from other causes — against the disease 
and death that follow breaches of physiologic 
law. For complete living it is necessary, not 
only that sudden annihilations of life shall be 
warded off ; but also that there shall be es- 
caped the incapacities and the slow annihila- 



24 EDUCATION. 

tion which unwise habits entail. As, with- 
out health and energy, the industrial, the pa- 
rental, the social, and all other activities be- 
come more or less impossible ; it is clear that 
this secondary kind of direct self-preservation 
is only less important than the primary kind ; 
and that knowledge tending to secure it 
should rank very high. 

It is true that here, too, guidance is in some 
measure ready supplied. By our various 
physical sensations and desires. Nature has 
insured a tolerable conformity to the chief re- 
quirements. Fortunately for us, want of 
food, great heat, extreme cold, produce 
promptings too peremptory to be disregarded. 
And would men habitually obey these and all 
like promptings when less strong, compara- 
tively few evils Avould arise. If fatigue of 
body or brain were in every case followed by 
desistance; if the oppression produced by a 
close atmosphere always led to ventilation; 
if there were no eating without hunger, or 
drinking without thirst ; then would the sys- 
tem be but seldom out of working order. But 
so profound an ignorance is there of the laws 
of life, that men do not even know that their 
sensations are their natural guides, and (when 
not rendered morbid by long-continued diso- 
bedience) their trustworthy guides. So that 
though, to speak teleologically. Nature has 
provided efficient safeguards to health, lack 
of knowledge makes them in a great measure 
useless. 

If any one doubts the importance of an ac- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 26 

quaintance with the fundamental principles 
of physiology as a means to complete living, 
let him look around and see how many men 
and women he can find in middle or later life 
who are thoroughly well. Occasionally only 
do we meet with an example of vigorous 
health continued to old age; hourly do we 
meet with examples of acute disorder, chronic 
ailment, general debility, premature decrepi- 
tude. Scarcely is there one to whom you put 
the question, who has not, in the course of 
his life, brought upon himself illnesses which a 
little knowledge would have saved him from. 
Here is a case of heart disease consequent on 
a rheumatic fever that followed reckless ex- 
posure. There is a case of eyes spoiled for life 
by overstudy. Yesterday the account was 
of one whose long-enduring lameness was 
brought on by continuing, spite of .the pain, 
to use a knee after it had been slightly in- 
jured. And to-day we are told of another 
"who has had to lie by for years, because he 
did not know that the palpitation he suffered 
from resulted from overtaxed brain. Now 
we hear of an irremediable injury that fol- 
lowed some silly feat of strength ; and, again, 
of a constitution that has never recovered 
from the effects of excessive work needlessly 
undertaken. While on all sides we see the 
perpetual minor ailments which accompany 
feebleness. Not to dwell on the natural pain, 
the weariness, the gloom, the waste of time 
and money thus entailed, only consider how 
greatly ill-health hinders the discharge of all 



26 EDUCATION. 

duties — makes business often impossible, and 
always more difficult ; produces an irritability 
fatal to the right management of children; 
puts the functions of citizenship out of the 
question ; and makes amusement a bore. Is 
it not clear that the physical sins— partly our 
forefathers' and partly our own— which pro- 
duce this ill-health, deduct more from com- 
plete living than anything else? and to a great 
extent make life a failure and a burden in- 
stead of a benefaction and a pleasure? 

To all which add the fact, that life, besides 
being thus immensely deteriorated, is also cut 
short. It is not true, as we commonly sup- 
pose, that a disorder or disease from which 
we have recovered leaves us as before. No 
disturbance of the normal course of the func- 
tions can ijass away and leave things exactly 
as they were. In all cases a permanent dam- 
age is done — not immediately appreciable, it 
may be, but still there ; and along with other 
such items which Nature in her strict account- 
keeping never drops, will tell against us to 
the inevitable shortening of our days. 
Through the accumulation of small injuries 
it is that constitutions are commonly under- 
mined, and break down, long before their 
time. And if we call to mind how far the av- 
erage duration of life falls below the possible 
duration, we see how immense is the loss. 
When, to the numerous partial deductions 
which bad health entails, we add this great 
final deduction, it results that ordinarily m-ore 
than one-half of life is thrown away. 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 27 

Hence, knowledge which subserves direct 
self-preservation by preventing this loss of 
health, is of primary importance. We do not 
contend that possession of such knowledge 
would by any means wholly remedy the evil. 
For it is clear that in our present phase of 
civilization men's necessities often compel 
them to transgress. And it is further clear 
that, even in the absence of such compulsion, 
their inclinations would frequently lead them, 
spite of their knowledge, to sacrifice future 
good to present gratification. But we do con- 
tend that the right knowledge impressed in 
the right way would effect much; and we 
further contend that as the laws of health 
must be recognized before they can be fully 
conformed to, the imparting of such knowl- 
edge must precede a more rational living — 
come when that may. We infer that as vig- 
orous health and its accompanying high 
spirits are larger elements of happiness than 
any other things whatever, the teaching how 
to maintain them is a teaching that yields in 
moment to no other whatever. And there- 
fore we assert that such a course of physiol- 
ogy as is needful for the comprehension of its 
general truths, and their bearings on daily 
conduct, is an all- essential part of a rational 
education. 

Strange that the assertion should need mak- 
ing! Stranger still that it should need de- 
fending ! Yet are there not a few by whom 
such a proposition will be received with some- 
thing approaching to derision. Men who 



28 EDUCATION. 

would blush if caught saying Iphigenia in- 
stead of Iphigenia, or would resent as an in- 
sult any imputation of ignorance respecting 
the fabled labors of a fabled demi-god, show 
not the slightest shame in confessing that 
they do not know where the Eustachian tubes 
are, what are the actions of the spinal cord, 
what is the normal rate of pulsation, or how 
the lungs are inflated. While anxious that 
their sons should be well up in the supersti- 
tions of two thousand years ago, they care 
not that they should be taught anything 
about the structure and functions of their own 
bodies— nay, would even disapprove such in- 
struction. So overwhelming is the influence 
of established routine! So terribly in our 
education does the ornamental override the 
useful ! 

We need not insist on the value of that 
knowledge which aids indirect self-preserva- 
tion by facilitating the gaining of a livelihood. 
This is admitted by all; and, indeed, by the 
mass is perhaps too exclusively regarded as 
the end of education. But while every one 
is ready to endorse the abstract proposition 
that instruction fitting youths for the business 
of life is of high importance, or even to con- 
sider it of supreme importance ; yet scarcely 
any inquire what instruction will so fit them. 
It is true that reading, writing, and arithmetic 
are taught with an intelligent appreciation of 
their uses; but when we have said this we 
have said nearly all. While the great bulk 
of what else is acquired has no bearing on the 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 29 

industrial activities, an immensity of infor- 
mation that has a direct bearing on the indus- 
trial activities is entirely passed over. 

For, leaving out only some very small 
classes, what are all men employed in? They 
are employed in the production, prejoaration, 
and distribution of commodities. And on 
what does efficiency in the production, prepa- 
ration, and distribution of commodities de- 
pend? It depends on the use of methods fit- 
ted to the respective natures of these com- 
modities; it depends on an adequate knowl- 
edge of their physical, chemical, or vita.1 prop- 
erties, as the case may be ; that is, it depends 
on Science. This order of knowledge, which 
is in great part ignored in our school courses, 
is the order of knowledge underlying the 
right x^erformance of all those f)rocesses by 
which civilized life is made possible. Unde- 
niable as is this truth, and thrust upon us as 
it is at every turn, there seems to be no liv- 
ing consciousness of it: its very familiarity 
makes it unregarded. To give due weight to 
our argument, we must, therefore, realize this 
truth to the reader by a rapid review of the 
facts. 

For all the higher arts of construction, 
some acquaintance with Mathematics is in- 
dispensable. The village carpenter, who, 
lacking rational instruction, lays out his 
work by empirical rules learnt in his appren- 
ticeship, equally with the builder of a Bri- 
tannia Bridge, makes hourly reference to the 
laws of quantitative relations. The surveyor 



30 EDUCATION. 

on whose survey the land is purchased; the 
architect in designing a mansion to be built 
on it ; the builder in preparing his estimates ; 
his foreman in laying out the foundations; 
the masons in cutting the stones; and the va- 
rious artisans who put up the fittings ; are £ill 
guided by geometrical truths. Railway-mak- 
ing is regulated from beginning to end by 
mathematics: alike in the preparation of 
plans and sections; in staking out the line; 
in the mensuration of cuttings and embank- 
ments; in the designing, estimating, and 
building of bridges, culverts, viaducts, tun- 
nels, stations. And similarly with the har- 
bors, docks, piers, and various engineering 
and architectural works that fringe the 
coasts and overspread the face of the coun- 
try; as well as the mines that run under- 
neath it. Out of geometry, too, as applied to 
astronomy, the art of navigation has grown ; 
and so, by this science, has been made possi- 
ble that enormous foreign commerce which 
supports a large part of our population, and 
supplies us with many necessaries and most 
of our luxuries. And now-a-days even the 
farmer, for the correct laying out of his 
drains, has recourse to the level— that is, to 
geometrical principles. When from those di- 
visions of mathematics which deal with space, 
and number, some small smattering of which 
is given in schools, we turn to that other di- 
vision which deals with force, of which even 
a, smattering is scarcely ever given, we meet 
with another lar£:e class of activities which 



KNOWLEDGE OF 3I0ST WOBTH. 31 

this science presides over. On the apphca- 
tion of rational mechanics depends the suc- 
cess of nearly all modern manufacture. The 
properties of the lever, the wheel and axle, 
etc., are involved in every machine — every 
machine is a solidified mechanical theorem; 
and to machinery in these times we owe 
nearly all production. Trace the history of 
the breakfast-roll. The soil out of which it 
came was drained with machine-made tiles; 
the surface was turned over by a machine; 
the seed was put in by a machine ; the wheat 
was reaped, thrashed, and winnowed by ma- 
chines ; by machinery it was ground and bolt- 
ed; and had the flour been sent to Gosport, 
it might have been made into biscuits by a 
machine. Look round the room in which 
you sit. If modern, probably the bricks in 
its walls were machine-made ; by machinery 
the flooring was sawn and planed, the mantel- 
shelf sawn and polished, the paper-hangings 
made and printed; the veneer on the table, 
the turned legs of the chairs, the carpet, the 
curtains, are all products of machinery. And 
your clothing — plain, figured, or printed— is 
it not wholly woven, nay, perhaps even 
sewed by machinery? And the volume you 
are reading — are not its leaves fabricated by 
one machine and covered with these words 
by another? Add to which that for the 
means of distribution over both land and sea, 
we are similarly indebted. And then let it be 
remembered that according as the principles 
of mechanics are well or ill used to these ends, 



32 EDUCATION. 

comes success or failure— individual and na- 
tional. The engineer who misapplies his for- 
mulse for the strength of materials, builds a 
bridge that breaks down. The manufact- 
urer whose apparatus is badly devised, cannot 
compete with another whose apparatus wastes 
less in friction and inertia. The ship-builder 
adhering to the old model, is outsailed by one 
who builds on the mechanically-justiued wave- 
line principle. And as the ability of a nation 
to hold its own against other nations depends 
on the skilled activity of its units, we see that 
on such knowledge may turn the national 
fate. Judge then the worth of mathematics. 
Pass next to Physics. Joined with mathe- 
matics, it has given us the steam-engine, 
which does the work of millions of laborers. 
That section of physics which deals with the 
laws of heat, has taught us how to economize 
fuel in our various industries; how to in- 
crease the produce of our smelting furnaces 
by substituting the hot for the cold blast; 
how to ventilate our mines ; how to prevent 
explosions by using the safety-lamp; and, 
through the thermometer, how to regulate in- 
numerable processes. That division which 
has the phenomena of light for its subject, 
gives eyes to the old and the myopic; aids 
through the microscope in detecting diseases 
and adulterations; and by improved light- 
houses prevents shipwrecks. Researches in 
electricity and magnetism have saved incal- 
culable life and property by the compass; 
have subserved sundry arts by the electro- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTR. 33 

type; and now, in the telegraph, have sup- 
phed us with the agency by which for the fu- 
ture all mercantile transactions will be regu- 
lated, political intercourse carried on, and 
perhaps national quarrels often avoided. 
While in the details of indoor life, from the 
improved kitchen-range up to the stereoscope 
on the drawing-room table, the applications 
of advanced physics underlie our comforts 
and gratifications. 

Still more numerous are the bearings of 
Chemistry on those activities by which men 
obtain the means of living. The bleacher, 
the dyer, the calico-printer, are severally oc- 
cupied in processes that are well or ill done 
according as they do or do not conform to 
chemical laws. The economical reduction 
from their ores of copper, tin, zinc, lead, sil- 
ver, iron, are in a great measure questions of 
chemistry. Sugar-refining, gas-making, soap- 
boiling, gunpowder manufacture, are opera- 
tions all partly chemical; as are also those 
by which are produced glass and porcelain. 
Whether the distiller's wort stops at the al- 
coholic fermentation or passes into the ace- 
tous, is a chemical question on which hangs 
his profit or loss and the brewer, if his busi- 
ness is sufliciently large, finds it pay to keep 
a chemist on his. premises. Glance through a 
work on technology, and it becomes at once 
apparent that there is now scarcely any proc- 
ess in the arts or manufactures over some 
part of which chemistry does not preside. 
And then, lastly, we come to the fact that in 



34 EDUCATION. 

these times, agriculture, to be profitably car- 
ried on, must have like guidance. The analy- 
sis of manures and soils ; their adaptations to 
each other ; the use of gypsum or other sub- 
stance for fixing ammonia ; the utilization of 
coprolites; the production of artificial ma- 
nures -all these are boons of chemistry which 
it behoves the farmer to acquaint himself 
with. Be it in the Inciter match, or in disin- 
fected sewage, or in photographs — in bread 
made without fermentation, or perfimies ex- 
tracted from refuse, we may perceive that 
chemistry affects all our industries ; and that, 
by consequence, knowledge of it concerns 
every one who is directly or indirectly con- 
nected with our industries. 

And then the science of life— Biology : does 
not this, too, bear fundamentally upon these 
processes of indirect self-preservation? With 
what we ordinarily call manufactures, it has, 
indeed, little connection ; but with the all-es- 
sential manufacture — that of food — it is insep- 
arably connected. As agriculture mugt eon- 
f orm its methods to the phenomena of vegeta- 
ble and animal life, it follows necessarily 
that the science of these phenomena is the ra- 
tional basis of agriculture. Various biological 
truths have indeed been empirically estab- 
lished and acted upon by farmers while yet 
there has been no conception of them as sci- 
ence: such as that particular manures are 
suited to particular plants ; that crops of cer- 
tain kinds unfit the soil for other crops ; that 
horses cannot do good work on poor food; 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 35 

that such and such diseases of cattle and 
sheep are caused by such and such conditions. 
These, and the every-day knowledge which the 
agriculturist gains by experience respecting 
the right management of plants and animals, 
constitute his stock of biological facts ; on the 
largeness of which greatly depends his suc- 
cess. And as these biological facts, scanty, in- 
definite, rudimentary, though they are, aid 
him so essentially ; judge what must be the 
value to him of such facts when they become 
positive, definite, and exhaustive. Indeed, 
even now we may see the benefits that ra- 
tional biology is conferring on him. The 
truth that the production of animal heat 
implies waste of substance, and that, there- 
fore, preventing loss of heat prevents the need 
for extra food — a purely theoretical conclu- 
sion — now guides the fattening of cattle : it is 
found that by keeping cattle warm, fodder is 
saved. Similarly with respect to variety of 
food. The experiments of physiologists have 
shown that not only is change of diet benefi- 
cial, but that digestion is facilitated by a mixt- 
ure of ingredients in each meal : both which 
truths are now influencing cattle -feeding. The 
discovery that a disorder known as "the stag- 
gers," of which many thousands of sheep have 
died annually, is caused by an entozoon 
which presses on the brain ; and that if the 
creature is extracted through the softened 
place in the skull which marks its position, the 
sheep usually recovers ; is another debt which 
agriculture owes to biology. When we ob- 



86 EDUCATION. 

serve the marked contrast between our farm- 
ing and farming on the Continent, and remem- 
ber that this contrast is mainly due to the far 
greater influence science has had upon farm- 
ing here than there ; and when we see how, 
daily, competition is making the adoption of 
scientific methods more general and necessary ; 
we shall rightly infer that very soon, agricult- 
ural success in England will be impossible 
without a competent knowledge of ammal and 
vegetable physiology. 

Yet one more science have we to note as 
bearing directly on industrial success — the 
Science of Society. Without knowing it, men 
who daily look at the state of the money-mar- 
ket, glance over prices current, discuss the 
probable crops of corn, cotton, sugar, wool, 
silk, weigh the chances of war, and from all 
those data decide on their mercantile opera- 
tions, are students of social science : empirical 
and blundering students it may be ; but still, 
students who gain the prizes or are plucked of 
their profits, according as they do or do not 
reach the right conclusion. Not only the 
manufacturer and the merchant must guide 
their transactions by calculations of supply 
and demand, based on numerous facts, and 
tacitly recognizing sundry general principles 
of social action ; but even the retailer must do 
the like : his prosperity very greatly depend- 
ing upon the correctness of his judgments re- 
specting the future wholesale prices and the 
future rates of consumption. Manifestly, all 
who take part in the entangled commercial ac- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 37 

tivities of a community, are vitally interested 
in understanding the laws according to which 
those activities vary. 

Thus, to all such as are occupied in the pro- 
duction, exchange, or distribution of commod- 
ities, acquaintance with science in some of its 
departments, is of fundamental importance. 
"Whoever is immediately or remotely impli- 
cated in any form of industry (and few are 
not) has a direct interest in understanding 
something of the mathematical, physical, and 
chemical properties of things ; perhaps, also, 
has a direct interest in biology ; and certainlj^ 
has in sociology. Whether he does or does 
not succeed well in that indirect self-preserva- 
tion which we call getting a good livelihood, 
depends in a great degree on his knowledge 
of one or more of these sciences : not, it may 
be, a rational knowledge ; but still a knowl- 
edge, though empirical. For what v/e call 
learning a business, really implies learning 
the science involved in it ; though not perhaps 
under the name of science. And hence a 
grounding in science is of great importance, 
both because it prepares for all this, and be- 
cause rational knowledge has an immense su- 
periority over empirical knowledge. More- 
over, not only is it that scientific culture is 
requisite for each, that he may understand 
the hoiv and the ivliy of the things and proc- 
esses with which he is concerned as maker 
or distributor; but it is often of much mo- 
ment that he should understand the how and 
the why of various other things and processes. 



38 EDUCATION. 

In this age of joint-stock undertakings, nearly 
every man above the laborer is interested as 
capitalist in some other occupation than his 
own; and, as thus interestvid, his profit or 
loss often depends on his knowledge of the 
sciences bearing on this other occupation. 
Here is a mine, in the sinking of which many 
shareholders ruined themselves, from not 
knowing that a certain fossil belonged to the 
old red sandstone, below which no coal is 
found. Not many years ago, 20,000Z. was lost 
in the prosecution of a scheme for collecting 
the alcohol that distils from bread in baking : 
all which would have been saved to the sub- 
scribers, had they known that less than a hun- 
dredth part by weight of the flour is changed 
in fermentation. Numerous attempts have 
been made to construct electro-magnetic en- 
gines, in the hope of superseding steam; but 
had those who supplied the money, under- 
stood the general law of the correlation and 
equivalence of forces, they might have had 
better balances at their bankers. Daily are 
men induced to aid in carrying out inventions 
which a mere tyro in science could show to 
be futile. Scarcely a locality but has its his- 
tory of fortunes thrown away over some im- 
possible project. 

And if already the loss from want of sci- 
ence is so frequent and so great, still greater 
and more frequent will it be to those who 
hereafter lack science. Just as fast as pro- 
ductive processes become more scientific, 
which competition will inevitably make them 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 39 

do ; and just as fast as joint-stock undertak- 
ings spread, which they certainly will; so 
fast will scientific knowledge grow necessary 
to every one. 

That which our school courses leave almost 
entirely out, we thus find to be that which 
most nearly concerns the business of life. All 
our industries would cease, were it not for 
that information which men begin to acquire 
as they best may after their education is said 
to be finished. And were it not for this in- 
formation, that has been from age to age ac- 
cumulated and spread by unofficial means, 
these industries would never have existed. 
Had there been no teaching but such as is 
given in our public schools, England would 
now be what it was in feudal times. That in- 
creasing acquaintance with the laws of phe- 
nomena which has through successive ages 
enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, 
and in these days gives the common laborer 
comforts which a few centuries ago kings 
could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree 
owed to the appointed means of instructing 
our youth. The vital knowledge— that by 
which we have grown as a nation to what we 
are, and which now underlies our whole ex- 
istence, is a knowledge that has got itself 
taught in nooks and corners; while the or- 
dained agencies for teaching have been 
mumbling little else but dead formulas. 

We come now to the third great division of 
human activities— a division for which no 



40 EDUCATION. 

preparation whatever is made. If by some 
strange chance not a vestige of us descended 
to the remote future save a pile of our school- 
books or some college examination papers, we 
may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of 
the period would be on finding in them no in- 
dication that the learners were ever likely to 
be parents. "This must have been the cur- 
riculum for their celibates," we may fancy 
him concluding. "I perceive here an elabo- 
rate preparation for "many things: especially 
for reading the books of extinct nations and 
of co-existing nations (from Avhich indeed it 
seems clear that these people had very little 
worth reading in their own tongue); but I 
find no reference whatever to the bringing up 
of children. They could not have been so 
absm-d as to omit all training for this gravest 
of responsibilities. Evidently then, this was 
the school course of one of then* monastic or- 
ders." 

Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that 
though on the treatment of offspring depend 
their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare 
or ruin ; yet not one word of instruction on 
the treatment of offspring is ever given to 
those who will hereafter be parents? Is it not 
monstrous that the fate of a new generation 
should be left to the chances of unreasoning 
custom, impulse, fancy — joined with the sug- 
gestions of ignorant nurses and the preju- 
diced counsel of grandmothers? If a mer- 
chant commenced business without any 
knowledge of arithmetic and book-keeping, 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 41 

we should exclaim at his folly, and look for 
disasti'ous consequences. Or if, before study- 
ing anatomy, a man set up as a surgical op- 
erator, we should wonder at his audacity and 
pity his patients. But that parents should 
begin the difficult task of rearing children 
without ever having given a thought to the 
principles— physical, moral, or intellectual— 
which ought to guide them, excites neither 
surprise at the actors nor pity for their vic- 
tims. 

To tens of thousands that are killed, add 
hundreds of thousands that survive with fee- 
ble constitutions, and millions that grow up 
with constitutions not so strong as they 
should be ; and you will have some idea of the 
curse inflicted on their offspring by parents 
ignorant of the laws of life. Do but consider 
for a moment that the regimen to which 
children are subject is hourly telling upon 
them to their life-long injury or benefit ; and 
that there are twenty ways of going wrong to 
one way of going right ; and you will get 
some idea of the enormous mischief that is 
almost everywhere inflicted by the thought- 
less, haphazard system in common use. Is it 
decided that a boy shall be clothed in some 
flimsy short dress, and be allowed to go play- 
ing about with limbs reddened by cold? The 
decision will tell on his whole future existence 
— either in illnesses; or in stunted growth; 
or in deficient energy ; or in a maturity less 
vigorous than it ought to have been, and con- 
sequent hindrances to success and happiness. 



42 EDUCATION. 

Are children doomed to a monotonous diet- 
ary, or a dietary that is deficient in nutri- 
tiveness? Their ultimate physical power and 
their efficiency as men and women, will inev- 
itably be more or less diminished by it. Are 
they forbidden vociferous play, or (being too 
ill-clothed to bear exposure), are they kept 
in-doors in cold weather? They are certain 
to fall below that measure of health and 
strength to which they would else have at- 
tained. When sons and daughters grow up 
sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard 
the event as a misfortune — as a visitation of 
Providence. Thinking after the prevalent 
chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils 
come without causes ; or that the causes are 
supernatural. Nothing of the kind. In some 
cases the causes are doubtless inherited; but 
in most cases foolish regulations are the 
causes. Very generally parents themselves 
are responsible for all this pain, this debility, 
this depression, this misery. They have un- 
dertaken to control the lives of their offspring 
from hour to hour; with cruel carelessness 
they have neglected to learn anything about 
these vital processes which they are unceas- 
ingly affecting by their commands and pro- 
hibitions; in utter ignorance of the simplest 
physiologic laws, they have been year by 
year undermining the constitutions of their 
children; and have so inflicted disease and 
premature death, not only on them but on 
their descendants. 
Equally great are the ignorance and the 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 43 

consequent injury, when we turn from phys- 
ical training to moral training. Consider the 
young mother and her nursery legislation. 
But a few years ago she was at school, where 
her memory was crammed with words, and 
names, and dates, and her reflective faculties 
scarcely in the slightest degree exercised — 
where not one idea was given her respecting 
the methods of deeding with the opening mind 
of childhood ; and where her discipline did not 
in the least fit her for thinking out methods 
of her own. The intervening years have been 
passed in practising music, in fancy-work, in 
novel-reading, and in party -going : no thought 
having yet been given to the grave responsi- 
bilities of maternity; and scarcely any of 
that solid intellectual culture obtained which 
would be some preparation for such responsi- 
bilities. And now see her with an unfolding 
human character committed to her* charge — 
see her profoundly ignorant of the phenomena 
with which she has to deal, undertaking to 
do that which can be done but imperfectly 
even with the aid of the profoundest knowl- 
edge. She knows nothing about the nature 
of the emotions, their order of evolution, 
their functions, or where use ends and abuse 
begins. She is under the impression that 
some of the feelings are wholly bad, which is 
not true of any one of them ; and that others 
are good, however far they may be carried, 
which is also not true of any one of them. 
And then, ignorant as she is of that with 
which she has to deal, she is equally ignorant 



44 EDUCATION. 

of the effects that will be produced on it by 
this or that treatment. What can be more 
inevitable than the disastrous results Ave see 
hourly arising? Lacking knowledge of men- 
tal phenomena, with their causes and conse- 
quences, her interference is frequently more 
mischievous than absolute passivity would 
have been. This and that kind of action, 
which are quite normal and beneficial, she 
perpetually thwarts; and so diminishes the 
child's happiness and profit, injures its tem- 
per and her own, and produces estrangement. 
Deeds which she thinks it desirable to en- 
courage, she gets performed by threats and 
bribes, or by exciting a desire for applause: 
considering little what the inward motive 
may be, so long as the outward conduct 
conforms; and thus cultivating hypocrisy, 
and fear, and selfishness, in place of 
good feeling. While insisting on truthful- 
ness, she constantly sets an example of un- 
truth, by threatening penalties which she 
does not inflict. While inculcating self-con- 
trol, she hourly visits on her little ones angry 
scoldings for acts that do not call for them. 
She has not the remotest idea that in the 
nursery, as in the world, that alone is the 
truly salutary discipline which visits on all 
conduct, good and bad, the natural conse- 
quences — the consequences, pleasurable or 
painful, which in the nature of things such 
conduct tends to bring. Being thus without 
theoretic guidance, and quite incapable of 
guiding herself by tracing the mental proc- 



i KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 45 

esses going on in her children, her rule is im- 
pulsive, inconsistent, mischievous, often, in 
the highest degree ; and would indeed be gen- 
erally ruinous, were it not that the over- 
whelming tendency of the growing mind to 
assume the moral type of the race, usually 
subordinates all minor influences. 

And then the culture of the intellect — is not 
this, too, mismanaged in a similar manner? 
Grant that the phenomena of intelligence 
conform to laws ; grant that the evolution of 
intelligence in a child also conforms to laws ; 
and it follows inevitably that education can 
be rightly guided only by a knowledge of 
these laws. To suppose that you can prop- 
erly regulate this process of forming and ac- 
cumulating ideas, without understanding the 
nature of the process, is absurd. How widely, 
then, must teaching as it is, differ from teach- 
ing as it should be ; when hardly any parents, 
and but few teachers, know anything about 
psychology. As might be expected, the sys- 
tem is grievously at fault, alike in matter and 
in manner. While the right class of facts is 
withheld, the wrong class is forcibly admin- 
istered in the wrong way and in the wrong 
order. With that common limited idea of 
education which confines it to knowledge 
gained from books, parents thrust primers 
into the hands of their little ones years too 
soon, to their great injury. Not recognizing 
the truth that the function of books is sup- 
plementary — that they form an indirect 
means to knowledge when direct means fail 



46 EDUCATION. 

— a means of seeing through other men what 
you cannot see for yourself; they are eager 
to give second-hand facts in place of first- 
hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous 
value of that spontaneous education which 
goes on in early years — not perceiving that a 
child's restless observation, instead of being 
ignored or checked, should be diligently ad- 
ministered to, and made as accurate and com- 
plete as possible ; they insist on occupying its 
eyes and thoughts with things that are, for 
the tune being, incomprehensible and repug- 
nant. Possessed by a sujijerstition which 
worships the symbols of knowledge instead 
of the knowledge itself, they do not see that 
only when his acquaintance with the objects 
and processes of the household, the streets, 
and the fields, is becoming tolerably exhaust- 
ive — only then should a child be introduced 
to the new sources of information which 
books supply: and this, not only because 
immediate cognition is of far greater value 
than mediate cognition ; but also, because the 
words contained in books can be rightly in- 
terpreted into ideas, only in proportion to the 
antecedent experience of things. Observe 
next, that this formal instruction, far too 
soon^commenced, is carried on with but little 
reference to the laws of mental development. 
Intellectual progress is of necessity from the 
concrete to the abstract. But regardless of 
this, highly abstract subjects, such as gram- 
mar, which should come quite late, are be- 
gun quite early. Political geography, dead 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH, 47 

and uninteresting to a child, and which 
should be an appendage of sociological studies, 
is commenced betimes ; while physical geog- 
raphy, comprehensible and comparatively 
attractive to a child, is in great part passed 
over. Nearly every subject dealt with is ar- 
ranged in abnormal order: definitions, and 
rules, and principles being put first, instead 
of being disclosed, as they are in the order of 
nature, through the study of cases. And 
then, pervading the whole, is the vicious sys- 
tem of rote learning — a system of sacrificing 
the spirit to the letter. See the results. 
What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by 
early thwarting, and a coerced attention to 
books — what with the mental confusion pro- 
duced by teaching subjects before they can 
be understood, and in each of them giving 
generalizations before the facts of which these 
are the generalizations — what with making the 
pupil a mere passive recipient of other's ideas, 
and not in the least leading him to be an active 
inquirer or self-instructor — and what with 
taxing 'the faculties to excess ; there are very 
few minds that become as efficient as they 
might be. Examinations being once passed, 
books are laid aside; the greater part of 
what has been acquired, being unorganized, 
soon drops out of recollection ; what remains 
is mostly inert — the art of applying knowl- 
edge not having been cultivated; and there 
is but little power either of accurate observa- 
tion or independent thinking. To all which 
add, that while much of the information 



48 EDUCATION 

gained is of relatively small value, an im- 
mense mass of information of transcendent 
value is entirely passed over. 

Thus we find the fact^ to be such as might 
have been inferred d prioin. The training of 
children— physical, moral, and intellectual- 
is dreadfully defective. And in great meas- 
ure it is so, because parents are devoid of that 
knowledge by which this training can alone 
be rightly guided. What is to be expected 
when one of the most intricate of problems is 
undertaken by those who have given scarcely 
a thought to the principles on which its solu- 
tion depends? For shoe-making or house- 
building, for the management of a ship or a 
locomotive-engine, a long apprenticeship is 
needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding of a 
human being in body and mind, is so compar- 
atively simple a process, that any one may 
superintend and regulate it with no prepara- 
tion whatever? If not — if the process is with 
one exception more complex than any in Na- 
ture, and the task of administering to it one 
of surpassing difficulty ; is it not madness to 
make no provision for such a task? Better 
sacrifice accomplishments than omit this all- 
essential instruction. When a father, acting 
on false dogmas adopted without examination, 
has alienated his sons, driven them into re- 
bellion by his harsh treatment, ruined them, 
and made himself miserable ; he might reflect 
that the study of Ethology would have been 
worth pursuing, even at the cost of knowing 
nothing about ^schylus. V7hen a mother is 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTR. 49 

mouming over a first-born that has sunk un- 
der the sequelse of scarlet-fever — when per- 
haps a candid medical man has confirmed her 
suspicion that her child would have recovered 
had not its system been enfeebled by over- 
study — when she is prosti-ate under the pangs 
of combined grief and remorse; it is but a 
small consolation that she can read Dante in 
the original. 

Thus we see that for regulating the third 
great division of human activities, a knowl- 
edge of the laws of life is the one thing need- 
ful. Some acquaintance with the first prin- 
ciples of physiology and the elementary truths 
of psychology is indispensable for the right 
bringing up of children. We doubt not that 
this assertion will by many be read with a 
smile. That parents in general should be ex- 
pected to acquire a knowledge of subjects so 
abstruse, will seem to them an absurdity. 
And if we proposed that an exhaustive knowl- 
edge of these subjects should be obtained by 
all fathers and mothers, the absurdity would 
indeed be glaring enough. But we do not. 
General principles only, accompanied by such 
detailed illustrations as may be needed to 
make them liuderstood, would suffice. And 
these might be readily taught— if not ration- 
ally, then dogmatically. Be this as it may, 
however, here are the indisputable facts: — 
that the development of children in mind and 
body rigorously obeys certain laws ; that un- 
less these laws are in some degree conformed 
to by parents, death is inevitable ; that unless 
4 



50 EDUCATION. 

they are in a great degree conformed to, there 
must result serious physical and mental de- 
fects ; and that only when they are completely 
conformed to, can a perfect maturity be 
reached. Judge, then, whether all who may 
one day be parents, should not strive with 
some anxiety to learn what these laws are. 

From the parental functions let us pass now 
to the functions of the citizen. We have here 
to inquire what knowledge best fits a man for 
the discharge of these functions. It cannot 
be alleged, as in the last case, that the need 
for knowledge fitting him for these functions 
is wholly overlooked ; for our school courses 
contain certain studies which, nominally at 
least, bear upon political and social duties. 
Of these the only one that occupies a promi- 
nent place is History. 

But as already more than once hinted, the 
historic information commonly given is al- 
most valueless for purposes of guidance. 
Scarcely any of the facts set down in our 
school-histories, and very few even of those 
contained in the more elaborate works writ- 
ten for adults, give any clue to the right prin- 
ciples of political action. The biographies of 
monarchs (and our children commonly learn 
little else) throw scarcely any light upon the 
science of society. Familiarity with court 
intrigues, plots, usurpations, or the like, and 
with all the personalities accompanying them, 
aids very little in elucidating the principles, 
on which national welfare depends. We read 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTR. 51 

of some squabble for power, that it led to a 
pitched battle ; that such and such were the 
names of the generals and their leading sub- 
ordinates ; that they had each so many thou- 
sand infantry and cavalry, and so many can- 
non ; that they arranged their forces in this 
and that order ; that they manoeuvred, at- 
tacked, and fell back in certain ways ; that at 
this part of the day such disasters were sus- 
tained and at that such advantages gained; 
that in one particular movement some leading 
officer fell, while in another a certain regiment 
was decimated ; that after all the changing fort- 
unes of the fight, the victory was gained by 
this or that army; and that so many were 
killed and wounded on each side, and so many 
captured by the conquerors. And now, out 
of the accumulated details which make up 
the narrative, say which it is that helps you 
in deciding on your conduct as a citizen. 
Supposing even that you had diligently read, 
not only " The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World," but accounts of all other battles that 
history mentions ; how much more judicious 
would your vote be at the next election? 
" But these are facts— interesting facts," you 
say. Without doubt they are facts (such, at 
least, as are not wholly or partially fictions) ; 
and to many they may be interesting facts. 
But this by no means implies that they are 
valuable. Factitious or morbid opinion often 
gives seeming value to things that have 
scarcely any. A tulipomaniac will not part 
with a choice bulb for its weight in gold. To 



52 EDUCATION. 

another man an ugly piece of cracked old 
china seems his most desirable possession. 
And there are those who give high prices for 
the relics of celebrated murderers. Will it 
be contended that these tastes are any meas- 
ures of value in the things that gratify them? 
If not, then it must be admitted that the lik- 
ing felt for certain classes of historical facts 
is no proof Of their worth ; and that we must 
test their worth as we test the worth of other 
facts, by asking to what uses they are appli- 
cable. Were some one to tell you that your 
neighbor's cat kittened yesterday, you would 
say the information was worthless. Fact 
though it might be, you would say it was an 
utterly useless fact — a fact that could in no 
way influence your actions in life — a fact that 
would not help you in learning how to live 
completely. Well, apply the same test to the 
great mass of historical facts, and you will get 
the same results. They are facts from which 
no conclusions can be drawn — unorganizable 
facts ; and therefore facts which can be of no 
service in establishing principles of conduct, 
which is the chief use of facts. Eead them, 
if you like, for amusement ; but do not flatter 
yourself they are instructive. 

That which constitutes History, properly so 
caUed, is in great part omitted from vv^orks 
on the subject. Only of late years have his- 
torians commenced giving us, in any consid- 
erable quantity, the truly valuable informa- 
tion. As in past ages the king was everything 
and the people nothing ; so, in past histories 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 53 

the doings of the king fill the entire picture, 
to which the national life forms but an ob- 
scure background. While only now, when 
the welfare of nations rather than of rulers is 
becoming the dominant idea, are historians 
beginning to occupy themselves with the phe- 
nomena of social progress. That which it real- 
ly concerns us to know, is the natural history 
of society. We want all facts which help us 
to understand how a nation has grown and or- 
ganized itself. Among these, let us of course 
have an account of its government ; with as 
little as may be of gossip about the men who 
officered it, and as much as possible about the 
structure, principles, methods, prejudices, 
corruptions, etc., which it exhibited: and let 
this account not only include the nature and 
actions of the central government, but also 
those of local governments, down to their mi- 
nutest ramifications. Let us of course also 
have a parallel description of the ecclesiasti- 
cal government — its organization, its conduct, 
its power, its relations to the State : and ac- 
companying this, the ceremonial, creed, and 
religious ideas — not only those nominally be- 
lieved, but those really believed and acted 
upon. Let us at the same time be informed 
of the control exercised by class over class, 
as displayed in all social observances — in ti- 
tles, salutations, and forms of address. Let 
us know, too, what were all the other customs 
which regulated the popular life out of doors 
and in-doors : including those which concern 
the relations of the sexes, and the relations of 



54 EDUCATION. 

parents to children. The superstitions, also, 
from the more important myths down to the 
charms in common use, should be indicated. 
Next should come a delineation of the indus- 
trial system ; showing to what extent the di- 
vision of labor was carried ; how trades were 
regulated, whether by caste, guilds, or other- 
wise ; what was the connection between em- 
ploj^ers and employed ; what were the agen- 
cies for distributing commodities, what were 
the means of communication ; what was the 
circulating medium. Accompanying all 
which should come an account of the indus- 
trial arts technically considered : stating the 
processes in use, and the quality of the pro- 
ducts. Further, the intellectual condition of 
the nation in its various grades should be de- 
picted : not only with respect to the kind and 
amount of education, but with respect to the 
progress made in science, and the prevailing 
manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic 
culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpt- 
ure, painting, dress, music, poetry, and fic- 
tion, should be described. Nor should there 
be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the 
people — their food, their homes, and their 
amusements. And lastly, to connect the 
v/hole, should be exhibited the morals, theo- 
retical and practical, of all classes: as indi- 
cated in their laws, habits, proverbs, deeds. 
All these facts, given with as much brevity as 
consists with clearness and accuracy, should 
be so grouped and arranged that they may be 
comprehended in their eyisemble; and thus 



KNOWLEDGE OF HOST WOBTH. 55 

may be contemplated as mutually dependent 
parts of one great whole. The aim should be 
so to present them that we may readily trace 
the consensus subsisting among them; with 
the view of learning what social phenomena 
co-exist with what others. And then the cor- 
responding delineations of succeeding ages 
should be so managed as to show us, as clear- 
ly as may be, how each belief, institution, 
custom and arrangement was modified ; and 
how the consensus of preceding structures 
and functions was developed into the consen- 
sus of succeeding ones. Such alone is the 
kind of information respecting past times, 
which can be of service to the citizen for the 
regulation of his conduct. The only history 
that is of practical value, is what maybe 
called Descriptive Sociology. And the high- 
est office which the historian can discharge, 
is that of so narrating the lives of nations, as 
to furnish materials for a Comparative Sociol- 
ogy ; and for the subsequent determination of 
the ultimate laws to which social phenomena 
conform. 

But now mark, that even supposing an ade- 
quate stock of this truly valuable historical 
knowledge has been acquired, it is of compar- 
atively little use without the key. And the 
key is to be found only in Science. Without 
an acquaintance with the general truths of bi- 
ology and psychology, rational interpretation 
of social phenomena is impossible. Only in 
proportion as men obtain a certain rude, em- 
pirical knowledge of human nature, are they 



56 EDUCATION. 

enabled to understand even the simplest facts 
of social life : as, for instance, the relation be- 
tween supply and demand. And if not even 
the most elementary truths of sociology can 
be reached until some knowledge is obtained 
of how men generally think, feel, and act un- 
der given circumstances ; then it is manifest 
that there can be nothing like a wide compre- 
hension of sociology, unless through a com- 
petent knowledge of man in all his faculties, 
bodily and mental. Consider the matter in 
the abstract, and this conclusion is self-evi- 
dent. Thus :— Society is made up of individu- 
als ; all that is done in society is done by the 
combined actions of individuals ; and there- 
fore, in individual actions only can be found 
the solutions of social phenomena. But the 
actions of individuals depend on the laws of 
their natures; and their actions cannot be 
understood until these laws are understood. 
These laws, however, when reduced to their 
simplest expression, are found to depend on 
the laws of body and mind in general. Hence 
it necessarily follows, that biology and psy- 
chology are indispensable as interpreters of so- 
ciology. Or, to state the conclusions still more 
simply : — all social phenomena are phenomena 
of life — are the most complex manifestations 
of life — are ultimately dependent on the laws 
of life — and can be understood only when the 
laws of life are understood. Thus, then, we 
see that for the regulation of this fourth divi- 
sion of human activities, we are, as before, de- 
pendent on Science. Of the knowledge com- 



. KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 57 

monly imparted in educational courses, very 
little is of any service in guiding a man in his 
conduct as a citizen. Only a small part of the 
history he reads is of practical value ; and of 
tliis small part he is not prepared to make 
proper use. He commonly lacks not only the 
materials for, but the very conception of, de- 
scriptive sociology; and he also lacks that 
knowledge of the organic sciences, without 
which even descriptive sociology can give 
him but httle aid. 

And now we co^ne to that remaining divi- 
sion of human life which includes the relaxa- 
tions, pleasures, and amusements filling leis- 
ure hours. After considering what training 
best fits for self-preservation, for the obtain- 
ment of sustenance, for the discharge of pa- 
rental duties, and for the regulation of social 
and political conduct ; %ve have now to consid- 
er what training best fits for the miscellaneous 
ends not included in these — for the enjoy- 
ments of Nature, of Literature, and of the 
Fine Arts, in all their forms. Postponing 
them as we do to things that bear more vitally 
upon human welfare; and bringing every- 
thing, as we have, to the test of actual value ; 
it will perhaps be inferred that we are inclined 
to slight these less essential things. No great- 
er mistake could be made, however. We 
yield to none in the value we attach to aesthetic 
culture and its pleasures. Without painting, 
sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions 
produced by natural beauty of every kind, 



58 EDUCATION. 

life would lose half its charm. So far from 
thinking that the training and gratification 
of the tastes are unimportant, we believe the 
time will come when they will occupy a much 
larger share of human life than now. When 
the forces of Nature have been fully conquered 
to man's use — when the means of production 
have been brought to perfection — when labor 
has been economized to the highest degree — 
when education has been so systematized that 
a preparation for the more essential activities 
may be made with comparative rapidity — and 
when, consequently, there is a great increase 
of spare time ; then will the poetry, both of 
Art and Nature, rightly fill a large space in 
the minds of all. 

But it is one thing to admit that sssthetic 
culture is in a high -degree conducive to hu- 
man happiness ; and another thing to admit 
that it is a fundamental requisite to human 
happiness. However important it may be, it 
must yield precedence to those kinds of cult- 
ure which bear more directly upon the duties 
of life. As before hinted, literature and the 
fine arts are made possible by those activities 
which make individual and social hfe possi- 
ble ; and manifestly, that which is made possi- 
ble, must be postponed to that which makes 
it possible. A florist cultivates a plant for the 
sake of its flower ; and regards the roots and 
leaves as of value, chiefly because they are in- 
strumental in producing the flower. But 
while, as an ultimate pi^oduct, the flower is 
the thing to which everything else is subordi- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 59 

nate, the florist very well knows that the 
root and leaves are intrinsically of greater 
importance ; because on them the evolution of 
the flower depends. He bestows every care 
in rearing a healthy plant; and knows it 
would be folly if, in his anxiety to obtain the 
flower, he were to neglect the plant. Similar- 
ly in the case before us. Architecture, sculpt- 
ure, painting, music, poetry, etc., may be 
truly called the efflorescence of civilized life. 
But even supposing them to be of such tran- 
scendent worth as to subordinate the civilized 
life out of which they grow (which can hardly 
be asserted), it will still be admitted that the 
production of a healthy civilized life must be 
the first consideration; and that the knowl- 
edge conducing to this must occupy the high- 
est place. 

And here we see most distinctly the vice of 
our educational system. It neglects the plant 
for the sake of the flower. In anxiety for ele- 
gance, it forgets substance. While it gives 
no knowledge conducive to self-preservation 
—while of knowledge that facilitates gaining 
a livelihood it gives but the rudiments, and 
leaves the greater part to be picked up any 
how in after life— while for the discharge of 
parental functions it makes not the slightest 
provision— and while for the duties of citizen- 
ship it prepares by imparting a mass of facts, 
most of which are irrelevant, and the rest 
without a key ; it is diligent in teaching every- 
thing that adds to refinement, polish, eclat. 
However fully we may admit that extensive 



60 EDUCATION. v 

acquaintance with modern languages is a 
valuable accomplishment, which, through 
reading, conversation, and travel, aids in 
giving a certain finish; it by no means fol- 
lows that this result is rightly purchased at 
the cost of that vitally imj^ortant knowledge 
sacrificed to it. Supposing it true that classi- 
cal education conduces to elegance and cor- 
rectness of style ; it cannot be said that ele- 
gance and correctness of style are compara- 
ble in importance to a familiarity with the 
principles that should guide the rearing of 
children. Grant that the taste may be great- 
ly improved by reading all the poetry writ- 
ten in extinct languages; yet it is not to be 
inferred that such improvement of taste is 
equivalent in value to an acquaintance with 
the laws of health. Accomplishments, the 
fine arts, belles-lettres, and all those things 
which, as we say, constitute the efflorescence 
of civilization, should be wholly subordinate 
to that knowledge and discipline in which 
civilization rests. As they occupy the leisure 
part of life, so should they occupy the leisure 
part of education. 

Recognizing thus the true position of aes- 
thetics, and holding that while the cultivation 
of them should form a part of education from 
its commencement, such cultivation should 
be subsidiary ; we have now to inquire what 
knowledge is of most use to this end — what 
knowledge best fits for this remaining sphere 
of activity. To this question the answer is 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 61 

still the same as heretofore. Unexpected as 
the assertion may be, it is nevertheless true, 
that the highest Art of every kind is based 
upon Science — that without Science there can 
be neither perfect production nor full appre- 
ciation. Science, in that limited technical 
acceptation current in society, may not have 
been possessed by many artists of high re- 
pute ; but acute observers as they have been, 
they have always possessed a stock of those 
empirical generalizations which constitute 
science in its lowest phase ; and they have 
habitually fallen far below perfection, partly 
because their generalizations were compara- 
tively few and inaccurate. That science nec- 
essarily underlies the fine arts, becomes mani- 
fest, a prio7'i, when we remember that art- 
products are all more or less representative 
of objective or subjective phenomena; that 
they can be true only in proportion as they 
conform to the laws of these phenomena ; and 
that before they can thus conform the artist 
must know what these laws are. That this 
a priori conclusion tallies with experience 
we shall soon see. 

Youths preparing for the practice of sculpt- 
ure, have to acquaint themselves Avith the 
bones and muscles of the human frame in 
their distribution, attachments, and move- 
ments. This is a portion of science; and it 
has been found needful to impart it for the 
prevention of those many errors which sculp- 
tors who do not possess it commit. For the 
prevention of other mistakes, a knowledge of 



62 EDUCATION. 

mechanical principles is requisite; and such 
knowledge not being usually possessed, grave 
mechanical mistakes are frequently made. 
Take an instance. For the stability of a fig- 
ure it is needful that the perpendicular from 
the centre of gravity — " the line of direction," 
as it is called — should fall within the base of 
support ; and hence it happens, that when a 
man assumes the attitude known as "stand- 
ing at ease," in which one leg is straightened 
and the other relaxed, the line of direction 
falls within the foot of the straightened leg. 
But sculptors unfamiliar with the theory of 
equilibrium, not uncommonly so represent this 
attitude, that the line of direction falls mid- 
way between the feet. Ignorance of the laws 
of momentum leads to analogous errors : as 
witness the admired Discobolus, which, as it 
is posed, must inevitably fall forward the 
moment the quoit is delivered. 

In painting, the necessity for scientific 
knowledge, empirical if not rational, is still 
more conspicuous. In what consists the gro- 
tesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless in their 
utter disregard of the laws of appearances — in 
their absurd linear perspective, and their want 
of aerial perspective ? In what are the drawings 
of a child so faulty, if not in a similar absence 
of truth — an absence arising, in great part, 
from ignorance of the way in which the as- 
pects of things vary with the conditions? Do 
but remember the books and lectures by 
which students are instructed; or consider 
the criticisms of Ruskin ; or look at the do- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 63 

ings of the Pre-Raffaelites ; and you will see 
that progress in painting implies increasing 
knowledge of how effects in Nature are pro- 
duced. The most diligent observation, if not 
aided by science, fails to preserve from error. 
Every painter will indorse the assertion that 
unless it is known what appearances must 
exist under given circumstances, they often 
will not be perceived ; and to know what ap- 
pearances must exist, is, in so far, to under- 
stand the science of appearances. From want 
of science Mr. J. Lewis, careful painter as he 
is, casts the shadow of a lattice-window in 
sharply-defined lines upon an opposite wall ; 
which he would not have done, had he been 
familiar with the phenomena of penumbrse. 
From want of science, Mr. Rosetti, catching 
sight of a peculiar iridescence displayed by 
certain hairy surfaces under particular lights 
(an iridescence caused by the diffraction of 
light in passing the hairs), commits the error 
of showing this iridescence on surfaces and 
in positions where it could not occur. 

To say that music, too, has need of scientific 
aid will seem still more surprising. Yet it is 
demonstrable that music is but an idealization 
of the natural language of emotion ; and that 
consequently, music must be good or bad ac- 
cording as it conforms to the laws of this nat- 
ural language. The various inflections of 
voice which accompany feelings of different 
kinds and intensities, have been shown to be 
the germs out of which music is developed. 
It has been further shown, that these inflec- 



G4 EDUCATION. 

tions and cadences are not accidental or arbi- 
trary ; but that they are determined by cer- 
tain general principles of vital action; and 
that their expressiveness depends on this. 
Whence it follows that musical phrases and 
the melodies built of them, can be effective 
only when they are in harmony with these 
general principles. It is difficult here prop- 
erly to illustrate this position. But perhaps 
it will suffice to instance the swarms of worth- 
less ballads that infest drawing-rooms, as 
compositions which science would forbid. 
They sin against science by setting to music 
ideas that are jiot emotional enough to prompt 
musical expression ; and they also sin against 
science by using musical phrases that have no 
natural relation to the ideas expressed : even 
where these are emotional. They are bad be- 
cause they are untrue. And to say they are 
untrue, is to say they are unscientific. 

Even in poetry the same thing holds. Like 
music, poetry has its root in those natural 
modes of expression which accompany deep 
feeling. Its rhythm, its strong and numerous 
metaphors, its hyperboles, its violent inver- 
sions, are simply exaggerations of the traits 
of excited speech. To be good, therefore, 
poetry must pay respect to those laws of ner- 
vous action which excited speech obeys. In 
intensifying and combining the traits of ex- 
cited speech, it must have due regard to i)ro- 
portion — must not use its appliances without 
restriction; but, where the ideas are least 
emotional, must use the forms of poetical ex- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 65 

pression sparingly; must use them more 
freely as the emotion rises ; and must carry 
them all to their greatest extent only where 
the emotion reaches a climax. The entire 
contravention of these principles results in 
bombast or doggerel. The insufficient respect 
for them is seen in didactic poetry. And it 
is because they are rarely fully obeyed, that 
we have so much poetry that is inartistic. 

Not only is it that the artist, of whatever 
kind, cannot produce a truthful work without 
he understands the laws of the phenomena he 
represents ; but it is that he must also under- 
stand how the minds of spectators or listeners 
will be affected by the several peculiarities of 
his work — a question in psychology. What 
impression any given art-product generates, 
manifestly depends upon the mental natures 
of those to whom it is presented ; and as all 
mental natures have certain general princi- 
ples in common, there must result certain 
corresponding general principles on which 
alone art-products can be successfully framed. 
These general principles cannot be fully un- 
derstood and applied, unless the artist sees 
how they follow from the laws of mind. To 
ask whether the composition of a picture is 
good, is really to ask how the perceptions and 
feelings of observers will be affected by it. 
To ask whether a drama is well constructed, 
is to ask whether its situations are so ar- 
ranged as duly to consult the power of atten- 
tion of an audience, and duly to avoid over- 
taxing any one class of feelings. Equally in 



66 EDUCATION. 

arranging the leading divisions of a poem or 
fiction, and in combining the words of a sin- 
gle sentence, the goodness of the effect de- 
pends upon the skill with which the mental 
energies and susceptibilities of the reader are 
economized. Every artist, in the course of 
his education and after-life, accimiulates a 
stock of maxims by which his practice is reg- 
ulated. Trace such maxims to their roots, 
and you find they inevitably lead you down 
to psychological principles. And only when 
the artist rationally understands these psy- 
chological principles and their various corol- 
laries, can he work in harmony with them. 

We do not for a moment believe that 
science will make an artist. While we con- 
tend that the leading laws both of objective 
and subjective phenomena must be under- 
stood by him^ we by no means contend that 
knowledge of such laws will serve in place of 
natural perception. Not only the poet, but 
also the artist of every type, is born, not 
made. What we assert is, that innate faculty 
alone will not suffice ; but must have the aid 
of organized knowledge. Intuition will do 
much, but it will not do all. Only v^hen 
Genius is married to Science can the highest 
results be produced. 

As we have above asserted, Science is nec- 
essary not only for the most successful pro- 
duction, but also for the full appreciation of 
the fine arts. In what consists the greater 
ability of a man than of a child to perceive 
the beauties of a picture ; unless it is in his 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTH. 67 

more extended knowledge of those truths in 
nature or life which the picture renders? 
How happens the cultivated gentleman to en- 
joy a fine poem so much more than a boor 
does ; if it is not because his wider acquaint- 
ance with objects and actions enables him to 
see in the poem much that the boor cannot 
see? And if, as is here so obvious, there 
must be some familiarity with the things rep- 
resented, before the representation can be ap- 
preciated; then the representation can be 
completely appreciated, only in proportion as 
the things represented are completely under- 
stood. The fact is, that every additional 
truth which a work of art expresses, gives an 
additional pleasure to the percipient mind— a 
pleasure that is missed by those ignorant of 
this truth. The more realities an artist indi- 
cates in any given amount of work, the more 
faculties does he appeal to ; the more numer- 
ous associated ideas does he suggest ; the more 
gratification does he afford. But to receive 
this gratification the spectator, listener, or 
reader, must know the realities which the 
artist has indicated ; and to know these reali- 
ties is to know so much science. 

And now let us not overlook the further 
great fact, that not only does science under- 
lie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that 
science is itself poetic. The current opinion 
that science and poetry are opposed is a delu- 
sion. It is doubtless true that as states of 
consciousness, cognition and emotion tend to 
exclude each other. And it is doubtless also 



68 EDUCATION. 

true that an extreme activity of the reflective 
powers tends to deaden the f eehngs ; while an 
extreme activity of the feelings tends to 
deaden the reflective powers ; in which sense, 
indeed, all orders of activity are antagonistic 
to each other. But it is not true that the 
facts of science are unpoetical: or that the 
cultivation of science is necessarily unfriendly 
to the exercise of imagination or the love of 
the beautiful. On the contrary science opens 
up realms of poetry where to the unscientific 
all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific 
researches constantly show us that they real- 
ize not less vividly, but more vividly, than 
others, the poetry of their subjects. Who- 
ever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on ge- 
ology, or read Mr. Lewes's " Seaside Studies, " 
will perceive that science excites poetry rather 
than extinguishes it. And whoever will con- 
template the life of Goethe will see that the 
poet and the man of science can co-exist in 
equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd 
and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more 
a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? 
Think you that a drop of water, which to the 
vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any- 
thing in the eye of the physicist who knows 
that its elements are held together by a force 
which, if suddenly liberated, Avould produce 
a flash of lightning? Think you that what 
is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated 
as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher 
associations to one who has seen through a 
microscope the wondrously varied and ele- 



KNOWLEDGE OF 3I0ST WOBTJI. 69 

gant forms of snow-crystals? Think you 
that the rounded rock marked with parallel 
scratches calls up as much poetry in an igno- 
rant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who 
knows that over this rock a glacier slid a mill- 
ion years ago? The truth is, that those who 
have never entered upon scientific pursuits 
know not a tithe of the poetry by which they 
are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth 
collected plants and insects, knows not half 
the halo of interest which lanes and hedge- 
rov»^s can assume. Whoever has not sought 
for fossils, has little idea of the poetical asso- 
ciations that surround the places where im- 
bedded treasures were found. Whoever at 
the seaside has not had a microscope and 
aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest 
pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is 
it to see how men occupy themselves with 
trivialities, and are indiiferent to the grand- 
est phenomena — care not to understand the 
architecture of the Heavens, but are deeply 
interested in some contemptible controversy 
about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots ! 
— are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and 
pass by without a glance that grand epic 
written by the finger of God upon the strata 
of the Earth ! 

We find, then, that even for this remaining 
division of human activities, scientific culture 
is the proper preparation. We find that aes- 
thetics in general are necessarily based upon 
scientific principles ; and can be pursued with 
complete success only through an acquaint- 



70 EDUCATION, 

ance with these principles. We find that for 
the criticism and due appreciation of works 
of art, a knowledge of the constitution of 
things, or in other words, a knowledge of 
science, is requisite. And we not only find 
that science is the handmaid to all forms of 
art and poetry, but that, rightly regarded, 
science is itself poetical. 

Thus far our question has been, the worth 
ol knowledge of this or that kind for pur- 
poses of guidance. We have now to judge 
the relative values of different kinds of knowl- 
edge for purposes of discipline. This divi- 
sion of our subject we are obliged to treat 
with comparative brevity; and happily, no 
very lengthened treatment of it is needed. 
Having found what is best for the one end, 
we have by implication found what is best 
for the other. We may be quite sure that 
the acquirement of those classes of facts which 
are most useful for regulating conduct, in- 
volves a mental exercise best fitted for 
strengthening the faculties. It would be ut- 
terly contrary to the beautiful economy of 
Nature, if one kind of culture were needed 
for the gaining of information and another 
kind were needed as a mental gymnastic. 
Everywhere throughout creation we find fac- 
ulties developed through the performance of 
those functions which it is their office to per- 
form ; not through the performance of artifi- 
cial exercises devised to fit them for these 
functions. The Red Indian acquires the swift- 



KNO WLEDGE OF MOST WOE TH. 71 

iiess and agility which make him a successful 
hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals ; and 
by the miscellaneous activities of his life, he 
gains a better balance of physical powers than 
gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking 
enemies and prey which he has reached by 
long practice, implies a subtlety of perception 
far exceeding anything produced by artificial 
training. And sunilarly throughout. From 
the Bushman, whose eye, which being habit- 
ually employed in identifying distant objects 
that are to be pursued or fled from, has ac- 
quired a quite telescopic range, to the account- 
ant whose daily practice enables him to add 
up several columns of figures simultaneously, 
we find that the highest power of a faculty 
results from the discharge of those duties 
which the conditions of life require it to dis- 
charge. And we may be certain, a priori^ 
that the same law holds throughout education. 
The education of most value for guidance, 
must at the same time be the education of 
most value for discipline. Let us consider 
the evidence. 

One advantage claimed for that dSvotion to 
language-learning which forms so promment 
a feature in the ordinary curriculum, is, that 
the memory is thereby strengthened. And it 
is apparently assumed that this is an advan- 
tage peculiar to the study of words. But the 
truth is, that the sciences afford far wider 
fields for the exercise of memory. It is no 
slight task to remember aU the facts ascer- 
tained respecting our solar system; much 



72 EDUCATION. 

more to remember all that is known concern- 
ing the structm^e of our galaxy. The new 
compounds which chemistry daily accumu- 
lates, are so numerous that few, save profes- 
sors, know the names of them all ; and to rec- 
ollect the atomic constitutions and affinities 
of all these compounds, is scarcely possible 
without making chemistry the occupation of 
life. In the enormous mass of phenomena 
presented by the Earth's crust, and in the still 
more enormous mass of phenomena presented 
by the fossils it contains, there is matter 
which it takes the geological student years of 
application to master. In each leading divi- 
sion of physics — sound, heat, light, electricity 
— the facts are numerous enough to alarm 
any one proposing to learn them all. And 
when we pass to the organic sciences, the ef- 
fort of memory required becomes still greater. 
In human anatomy alone, the quantity of de- 
tail is so great, that the young surgeon has 
commonly to get it up half-a-dozen times be- 
fore he can permanently retain it. The num- 
ber of species of plants which botanists dis- 
tinguish, amounts to some 320,000; while the 
varied forms of animal life with which the 
zoologist deals, are estimated at some two 
millions. So vast is the accumulation of facts 
which men of science have before them, that 
only by dividing and subdividing their labors 
can they deal with it. To a complete knowl- 
edge of his own division, each adds but a gen- 
eral knowledge of the rest. Surely, then, sci- 
ence, cultivated even to a very moderate ex- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 73 

tent, affords adequate exercise for memory. 
To say the very least, it involves quite as good 
a training for this faculty as language does. 

But now mark that while for the training 
of mere memory, science is, as good as, if not 
better than, language ; it has an immense su- 
periority in the kind of memory it cultivates. 
In the acquirement of a language, the connec- 
tions of ideas to be established in the mind cor- 
respond to facts that are in great measure 
accidental; whereas, in the acquirement of 
science, the connections of ideas to be estab- 
lished in the mind correspond to facts that are 
mostly necessary. It is true that the relations 
of words to their meaning is in one sense nat- 
ural, and that the genesis of these relations 
may be traced back a certain distance ; though 
very rarely to the beginning ; (to which let us 
add the remark that the laws of this genesis 
form a branch of mental science — the science 
of philology.) But since it will not be con- 
tended that in the acquisition of languages, as 
ordinarily carried on, these natural relations 
between words and their meanings are habit- 
ually traced, and the laws regulating' them ex- 
plained; it must be admitted that they are 
commonly learned as fortuitous relations. On 
the other hand, the relations which science 
presents are casual relations ; and, when prop- 
erly taught, are understood as such. Instead 
of being practically accidental, they are nec- 
essary ; and as such, give exercise to the rea- 
soning faculties. While language familiar- 
izes, with non-rational relations, science fa- 



74 EDUCATION. 

miliarizes with rational relations. While the 
one exercises memory only, the other exei'- 
cises both memory and understanding. 

Observe next that a great superiority of sci- 
ence over language as a means of discipline, 
is, that it cultivates the judgment. As, in a 
lecture on mental education delivered at the 
Eoyal Institution, Professor Faraday well re- 
marks, the most common intellectual fault is 
deficiency of judgment. He contends that 
*' society, speaking generally, is hot only ig- 
norant as respects education of the judgment, 
but it is also ignorant of its ignorance." And 
the ca.use to which he ascribes this state is 
want of scientific culture. The truth of his 
conclusion is obvious. Correct judgment with 
regard to all surrounding things, events, and 
consequences, becomes possible only through 
knowledge of the way in which surrounding 
phenomena depend on each other. No extent 
of acquaintance with the meanings of words, 
can give the power of forming correct infer- 
ences respecting causes and effects. The con- 
stant habit of drawing conclusions from data, 
and then of verifying those conclusions by ob- 
servation and experiment, can alone give the 
power of judging correctly. And that it ne- 
cessitates this habit is one of the immense ad- 
vantages of science. 

Not only, however, for intellectual disci- 
pline is science the best ; but also for inoral 
discipline. The learning of languages tends, 
if anything, further to increase the already 
undue respect for authority. Such and such 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 75 

are the meanings of these words, says the 
teacher or the dictionary. So and so is the 
rule in this case, says the grammar. By the 
pupil these dicta are received as unquestion- 
able. His constant attitude of mind is that 
of submission to dogmatic teaching. And a 
necessary result is a tendency to accept with- 
out inquiry whatever is established. Quite 
opposite is the attitude of mind generated by 
the cultivation of science. By science, con- 
stant appeal is made to individual reason. 
Its truths are not accepted upon authority 
alone ; but all are at liberty to test them — nay, 
in many cases, the pui)il is required to think 
out his own conclusions. Every step in a sci- 
entific investigation is submitted to his judg- 
ment. He is not asked to admit it without 
seeing it to be true. . And the trust in his own 
powers thus produced, is further increased by 
the constancy with which Nature justifies his 
conclusions when they are correctly drawn. 
From all which there flows that independence 
which is a most valuable element in char- 
acter. Nor is this the only moral benefit be- 
queathed by scientific culture. When carried 
on, as it should always be, as much as possi- 
ble under the form of independent research, 
it exercises perseverance and sincerity. As 
says Professor Tyndall of inductive inquiry, 
' ' it requires patient industry, and an humble 
and conscientious acceptance of what Nature 
reveals. The first condition of success is an 
honest receptivity and a willingness to aban- 
don all preconceived notions, however cher- 



76 EDUCATION. 

ished, if they be found to contradict the truth. 
Believe me, a self-renunciation which has 
something noble in it, and of which the world 
never hears, is often enacted in the private ex- 
perience of the true votary of science. " 

Lastly we have to assert — and the assertion 
will, we doubt not, cause extreme surprise — 
that the discipline of science is superior to 
that of our ordinary education, because of the 
religious culture that it gives. Of course we 
do not here use the words scientific and relig- 
ious in their ordinary limited acceptations; 
but in their widest and highest acceptations. 
Doubtless, to the superstitions that pass under 
the name of religion, science is antagonistic ; 
but not to the essential religion which these 
superstitions merely hide. Doubtless, too, in 
much of the science that is current, there is a 
pervading spirit of irreligion ; but not in that 
true science which has passed beyond the 
superficial into the profound. 

" True science and true religion," says Professor Huxley at 
the close of a recent course of lectures, " are twin-sisters, and 
the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the 
death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it 
is religious; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the 
scientific depth and firmness of its basis. The great deeds of 
philosophers have been less the fruit of their intellect than of 
the direction of that intellect by an eminently rehgious tone 
of mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to their patience, 
their love, their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than 
to their logical acumen." 

So far from science being irreligious, as 
many think, it is the neglect of science that 
is irreligious — it is the refusal to study the 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 77 

surrounding creation that is irreligious. Take 
a humble simile. Suppose a writer were daily 
saluted with praises couched in superlative 
language. Suppose the wisdom, the grandeur, 
the beauty of his works, were the constant 
topics of the eulogies addressed to him. Sup- 
pose those who unceasingly uttered these eu- 
logies on his works were content with looking 
at the outsides of them ; and had never opened 
them, much less tried to understand them. 
What value should we put upon their praises? 
What should we think of their sincerity? 
Yet, comparing small things to great, such is 
the conduct of mankind in general, in refer- 
ence to the Universe and its Cause. Nay, it 
is worse. Not only do they pass by without 
study, these things which they daily proclaim 
to be so wonderful ; but very frequently they 
condemn as mere trifiers those who give time 
to the observation of Nature— they actually 
scorn those who show any active interest in 
these marvels. We repeat, then, that not 
science, but the neglect of science, is irrelig- 
ious. Devotion to science is a tacit worship 
—a tacit recognition of worth in the things 
studied; and by implication in their Cause. 
It is not a mere lip-homage, but a homage ex- 
pressed in actions — not a mere professed re- 
spect, but a respect proved by the sacrifice of 
time, thought, and labor. 

Nor is it thus only that ti'ue science is es- 
sentially religious. It is religious, too, inas- 
much as it generates a profound respect for, 
and an implicit faith in, those uniform laws 



18 EDUCATION. 

which underlie all things. By accumulated 
experiences the man of science acquires a 
thorough belief in the unchanging relations of 
phenomena— in the invariable connection of 
cause and consequence— in the necessity of 
good or evil results. Instead of the rewards 
and punishments of traditional belief, which 
men vaguely hope they may gain, or escape, 
spite of their disobedience ; he finds that there 
are rewards and punishments in the ordained 
constitution of things, and that the evil results 
of disobedience are inevitable. He sees that 
the laws to which we must submit are not 
only inexorable but beneficent. He sees that 
in virtue of these laws, the process of things 
is ever towards a greater perfection and a 
higher happiness. Hence he is led constantly 
to insist on these laws, and is indignant when 
men disregard them. And thus does he, by 
asserting the eternal principles of things and 
the necessity of conforming to them, prove 
himself intrinsically religious. 

To all which add the further religious aspect 
of science, that it alone can give us true con- 
ceptions of ourselves and our relation to the 
mysteries of existence. At the same time that 
it shows us all which can be known, it shows 
us the limits beyond which we can know noth- 
ing. Not by dogmatic assertion does it teach 
the impossibility of comprehending the ulti- 
mate cause of things ; but it leads us clearly 
to recognize this mipossibility by bringing us 
in every direction to boundaries we caimot 
cross. It realizes to us in a way which noth- 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WORTH. 79 

ing else can, the littleness of human intelli- 
gence in the face of that which transcends 
human intelligence. While towards the tra- 
ditions and authorities of men its attitude 
may be proud, before the impenetrable veil 
which hides the Absolute its attitude is hum- 
ble — a true pride and a true humility. Only 
the sincere man of science (and by this title 
we do not mean the mere calculator of dis- 
tances, or analyzer of compounds, or labeller 
of species ; but him who through lower truths 
seeks higher, and eventually the highest) — 
only the genuine man of science, we say, can 
truly know how utterly beyond, not only hu- 
man knowledge, but human conception, is the 
Universal Power of which Nature, and Life, 
and Thought are manifestations. 

We conclude, then, that for discipline, as 
well as for guidance, science is of chiefest 
value. In all its effects, learning the mean- 
ings of things, is better than learning the 
meanings of words. Whether for intellectual, 
moral, or religious training, the study of sur- 
rounding phenomena is immensely superior 
to the study of grammars and lexicons. 

Thus to the question with which we set out 
— What knowledge is of most worth? — the 
uniform reply is — Science. This is the ver- 
dict on all the counts. For direct self-preser- 
vation, or the maintenance of life and health, 
the all-important knowledge is — Science. For 
that indirect self-preservation which we call 
gaining a livelihoood, the knowledge of erreat- 



80 EDUCATION. 

est value is — Science. For the due discharge 
of parental functions, the proper guidance is 
to be fovmd only in— Science. For that inter- 
pretation of national life, past and present, 
without which the citizen cannot rightly reg- 
ulate his conduct, the indispensable key is — 
Science. Alike for the most perfect produc- 
tion and highest enjoyment of art in all its 
forms, the needful preparation is still — Sci- 
ence. And for purposes of discipline— in- 
tellectual, moral, religious— the most effi- 
cient study is, once more — Science. The ques- 
tion which at first seemed so perplexed, has 
become, in the course of our inquiry, compar- 
atively simple. We have not to estimate the 
degrees of importance of different orders of 
human activity, and different studies as sev- 
erally fitting us for them ; since we find that 
the study of Science, in its most comprehen- 
sive meaning, is the best preparation for all 
these orders of activity. We have not to de- 
cide between the claims of knowledge* of 
great though conventional value, and knowl- 
edge of less though intrinsic value; seeing 
that the knowledge which we find to be of 
most value in all other respects, is intrin- 
sically most valuable : its worth is not depen- 
dent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is the 
relation of man to the surrounding world. 
Necessary and eternal as are its truths, all 
Science concerns all mankind for all time. 
Equally at present, and in the remotest fu- 
ture, must it be of incalculable importance 
for the regulation of their conduct, that men 



KNOWLEDGE OF MOST WOBTU. 81 

should understand the science of life, physi- 
cal, mental, and social ; and that they should 
understand all other science as a key to the 
science of life. 

And yet the knowledge which is of such 
transcendent value is that which, in our age 
of boasted education, receives the least at- 
tention. While this which we call civilization 
could never have arisen had it not been for 
science ; science forms scarcely an appreciable 
element in what men consider civilized train- 
ing. Though to the progress of science we 
owe it, that millions find support where once 
there was food only for thousands; yet of 
these millions but a few thousands pay any re- 
spect to that which has made their existence 
possible. Though this increasing knowledge 
of the properties and relations of things has 
not only enabled wandering tribes to grow in- 
to populous^nations, but has given to the count- 
less members of those populous nations com- 
forts and pleasures which their few naked 
ancestors never even conceived, or could 
have believed, yet is this kind of knowledge 
only now receiving a grudging recognition in 
our highest educational institutions. To the 
slowly growing acquaintance with the uni- 
form co-existences and sequences of phe- 
nomena — to the establishment of invariable 
laws, we owe our emancipation from the 
grossest superstitions. But for science we 
should be still worshipping fetishes ; or, with 
hecatombs of victims, propitiating diabolical 
deities. And yet this science, which, in place 
6 



82 EDUCATION. 

of the most degrading conceptions of things, 
has given us some insight into the grandeurs 
of creation, is written against in our theol- 
ogies and frowned upon from our pulpits. 

Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may 
say that in the family of knowledges, Science 
is the household drudge, who, in obscurity, 
hides unrecognized perfections. To her has 
been committed all the work ; by her skill, 
intelligence and devotion, have all the con- 
veniences and gratifications been obtained; 
and while ceaselessly occupied ministering to 
the rest, she has been kept in the background, 
that her haughty sisters might flaunt their 
fripperies in the eyes of the world. The 
parallel holds yet further. For we are fast 
coming to the denouement, when the positions 
will be changed; and while these haughty 
sisters sink into merited neglect. Science, 
proclaimed as highest alike in worth and 
beauty, will reign supreme. - 



CHAPTER II. 

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 

There cannot fail to be a relationship be- 
tween the successive systems of education, 
and the successive social states with which 
they have co-existed. Having a common or- 
igin in the national mind, the institutions of 
each epoch, whatever be their special func- 
tions, must have a family likeness. When 
men received their creed and its interpreta- 
tions from an infallible authority deigning no 
explanations, it was natural that the teach- 
ing of children should be purely dogmatic. 
While "believe and ask no questions" was 
the maxim of the Church, it was fitly the 
maxim of tlie school. Conversely, now that 
Protestantism has gained for adults a right 
of private judgment and established the prac- 
tice of appealing to reason, there is harmony 
in the change that has made juvenile instruc- 
tion a process of exposition addressed to the 
understanding. Along with political despot- 
ism, stern in its commands, ruling by force 
of terror, visiting trifling crimes with death, 
and implacable in its vengeance on the dis- 
loj^al, there necessarily grew up an academic 
discipline similarly harsh — a discipline of 
multiplied injunctions and blows for every 
breach of them — a discipline of unlimited au- 



84 education: 

tocracy upheld by rods, and ferules, and the 
black-hole. On the other hand, the increase 
of political liberty, the abolition of law re- 
stricting individual action, and the ameliora- 
tion of the criminal code, have been accom- 
panied by a kindred progress towards non- 
coercive education : the pupil is hampered by 
fewer restraints, and other means than pun- 
ishments are used to govern him. In those 
ascetic days when men, acting on the great- 
est misery principle, held that the more grat- 
ifications they denied themselves the more 
virtuous they were, they, as a nmtter of 
course, considered that the best education 
which most thwarted the wishes of their chil- 
dren, and cut short all spontaneous activity 
with — "You mustn't do so." While on the 
contrary, now that happiness is coming to be 
regarded as a legitimate aim — now that hours 
of labor are being shortened and popular rec- 
reations provided, parents and teachers are 
beginning to see that most childish desires 
may rightly be gratified, tha.t childish sports 
should be encouraged, and that the tenden- 
cies of the growing mind are not altogether 
so diabolical as was supposed. The age in 
which all thought that trades must be estab- 
lished by bounties and prohibitions; that 
manufacturers needed their materials and 
qualities and prices to be prescribed; and 
that the value of money could be determined 
by law ; was an age which unavoidably cher- 
ished the notions that a child's mind could be 
made to order ; that its powers were to be im- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 85 

parted by the schoolmaster ; that it was a re- 
ceptacle into which knowledge was to be put 
and there built up after its teacher's ideal. 
In this free-trade era, however, when we are 
learning that there is much more self -regula- 
tion in things than was supposed ; that labor, 
and commerce, and agriculture, and naviga- 
tion can do better without management than 
with it ; that political governments, to be ef- 
ficient, must grow up from within and not 
be imposed from without ; we are also begin- 
ning to see that there is a natural process of 
mental evolution which is not to be disturbed 
without injury; that we may not force on 
the vmf olding mind our artificial forms ; but 
that Psychology, also, discloses to us a law of 
supply and demand, to which, if we would 
not do harm, w^e must conform. Thus alike 
in its oracular dogmatism, in its harsh disci- 
pline, in its multiplied restrictions, in its pro- 
fessed asceticism, and in its faith in the de- 
vices of men, the old educational regime was 
akin to the social systems with which it was 
contemporaneous; and similarly, in the re- 
verse of these characteristics our modern 
modes of culture correspond to our more lib- 
eral religious and political institutions. 

But there remain further parallelisms to 
which we have not yet adverted : that, name- 
ly, between the processes by which these 
respective cha^nges have been wrought out; 
and that between the several states of het- 
erogeneous opinion to which they have 
led. Some centuries ago there was uniform- 



86 EDUCATION. 

ity of belief — religious, political, and educa- 
tional. All men were Romanists, all were 
Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle, 
and no one thought of calling in question 
that grammar-school routine under which all 
were brought up. The same agency has in 
each case replaced this uniformity by a con- 
stantly increasing diversity. That tendency 
towards assertion of the individuality, which, 
after contributing to produce the great Prot- 
estant movement, has since gone on to pro- 
duce an ever-increasing number of sects — that 
tendency which initiated political parties, 
and out of the two primary ones has, in these 
modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which 
every year adds— that tendency which led to 
the Baconian rebellion against the schools, 
and has since originated here and abroad 
sundry new systems of thought— is a ten- 
dency which, in education also, has caused 
division and the accumulation of methods. 
As external consequences of the same inter- 
nal change, these processes have necessarily 
been more or less simultaneous. The decline 
of authority, whether papal, philosophic, 
kingly, or tutorial, is essentially one phenom- 
enon ; in each of its aspects a leaning towards 
free action is seen alike in the working out of 
the change itself, and in the new forms of 
theory and practice to which the change has 
given birth. 

While many will regret this multiplication 
of schemes of juvenile culture, the catholic 
observer will discern in it a means of ensur- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 87 

ing the final establishment of a rational sys- 
tem. Whatever may be thought of theologi- 
cal dissent, it is clear that dissent in educa- 
tion results in facilitating inquiry by the di- 
vision in labor. Were we in possession of the 
true method, divergence from it would, of 
course, be prejudicial; but the true method 
having to be found, the efforts of numerous 
independent seekers carrying out their re- 
searches in different directions, constitute a 
better agency for finding it than any that 
could be devised. Each of them struck by 
some new thought which probably contains 
more or less of basis in facts— each of them 
zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expe- 
dients to test its correctness, and untiring in 
his efforts to make known its success— each 
of them merciless in his criticism on the rest 
—there cannot fail, by composition of forces, 
to be a gradual approximation of all towards 
the right course. Whatever portion of the 
normal method any one of them has discov- 
ered, must, by the constant exhibition of its 
results, force itself into adoption; whatever 
wrong practices he has joined with it must, by 
repeated experiment and failure, be explod. 
ed. And by this aggregation of truths and 
elimination of errors, there must eventually 
be developed a correct and complete body of 
doctrine. Of the three phases through which 
human opinion passes— the unanimity of the 
ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, 
and the unanimity of the wise— it is manifest 
that the second is the parent of the third. 



88 EDUCATION. 

They are not sequences in time only; they 
are sequences in causation. However impa- 
tiently, therefore, we may witness the pres- 
ent conflict of educational systems, and how- 
ever much we may regret its accompanying 
evils, we must recognize it as a transition 
stage needful to be passed through, and ben- 
eficent in its ultimate effects. 

Meanwhile may we not advantageously 
take stock of our progress? After fifty years 
of discussion, experiment, and comparison of 
results, may we not expect a few steps tow- 
ards the goal to be already made good? Some 
old methods must by this time have fallen 
out of use ; some new ones luust have become 
established; and many others must be in 
process of general abandonment or adoption. 
Probably we may see in these various 
changes, when put side by side, similar char- 
acteristics — may find in them a common ten- 
dency; and so, by inference, may get a clue 
to the direction in which experience is leading 
us, and gather hints how we may achieve yet 
further improvements. Let us then, as a 
preliminary to a deeper consideration of the 
matter, glance at the leading contrasts be- 
tween the education of the past and of the 
present. 

The suppression of every error is commonly 
followed by a temporary ascendency of the 
contrary one; and it so happened, that after 
the ages whem physical development alone 
was aimed at, there came an age when cult- 
ure of the mind was the sole solicitude — when 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 89 

children had lesson-books put before them at 
between two and three years old— v/hen 
school-hours were protracted, and the gettmg 
of knowledge was thought the one thmg 
needful. As, further, it usually happens, 
that after one of these reactions the next ad- 
vance is achieved by co-ordinating the antag- 
onist errors, and perceiving that they are op- 
posite sides of one truth ; so we are now com- 
ing to the conviction that body and mind 
must both be cared for, and the whole being 
unfolded. The forcing system has been in 
great measure given up, and precocity is dis- 
couraged. People are beginning to see that 
the first requisite to success in life, is to be a 
good animal. The best brain is found of little 
service, if there be not enough vital energy to 
work it ; and hence to obtain the one by sac- 
rificing the source of the other, is now con- 
sidered a folly— a folly which the eventual 
failure of juvenile prodigies constantly illus- 
trates. Thus we are discovering the wisdom 
of the saying, that one secret in education is 
" to know how wisely to lose time." 

The once universal practice of learning by 
rote, is daily falling more mto discredit. All 
modern authorities condemn the old mechan- 
ical way of teaching the alphabet. The mul- 
tiplication table is now frequently taught ex- 
perimentally. In the acquirement of lan- 
guages, the grammar-school plan is being su- 
perseded by plans based on the spontaneous 
process followed by the child in gaining its 
mother tongue. Describing the methods 



90 EDUCATION. 

there used, tlie "Reports on the Training 
School at Battersea" say:— "The instruction 
in the whole preparatory course is chiefly 
oral, and is illustrated as much as possible by 
appeals to nature. " And so throughout. The 
rote-system, like other systems of its age, 
made more of the forms and symbols than of 
the things symbolized. To repeat the words 
correctly was everything ; to understand their 
meaning nothing: and thus the spirit was 
sacrificed to the letter. It is at length per- 
ceived, that in this case as in others, such a 
result is not accidental but necessary — that 
in proportion as there is attention to the 
signs, there must be inattention to the things 
signified ; or that, as Montaigne long ago said 
— Sgavoir par co&ur n'est pas sgavoir. 

Along with rote-teaching, is declining also 
the nearly allied teaching by rules. The par- 
ticulars first, and then the generalization, is 
the new method — a method, as the Battersea 
School Reports remark, which, though "the 
reverse of the method usually followed which 
consists in giving the pupil the rule first, " is 
yet proved by experience to be the right one. 
Rule-teaching is ijow condemned as impart- 
ing a merely empirical knowledge — as pro- 
ducing an appearance of understanding with- 
out the reality. To give the net product of 
inquiry, without the inquiry that leads to it, 
is found to be both enervating and inefficient. 
General truths to be of due and permanent 
use, must be earned. "Easy come easy go," 
is a saying as applicable to knowledge as to 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 91 

wealth. While rules, lying isolated in the 
mind— not joined to its other contents as out- 
growths from them— are continually forgot- 
ten, the principles which those rules express 
piecemeal, become, when once reached by the 
understanding, enduring possessions. While 
the rule-taught youth is at sea when beyond 
his rules, the youth instructed in principles 
solves a new case as readily as an old one. 
Between a mind of rules and a mind of prin- 
ciples, there exists a difference such as that 
between a confused heap of materials, and the 
same materials organized into a complete 
whole, with all its parts bound together. Of 
which types this last has not only the advan- 
tage that its constituent parts are better re- 
tained, but the much greater advantage, that 
it forms an efficient agent for inquiry, for in- 
dependent thought, for discovery— ends for 
which the first is useless. Nor let it be sup- 
posed that this is a simile only: it is the lit- 
eral truth. The union of facts into generali- 
zations is the organization of knowledge, 
whether considered as an objective phenome- 
non, or a subjective one: and the mental 
grasp may be measured by the extent to 
which this organization is carried. 

From the substitution of principles for rules, 
and the necessarily co-ordinate practice of 
leaving abstractions untaught until the mind 
has been familiarized with the facts from 
which they are abstracted, has resulted the 
postponement of some once early studies to a 
late period. This is exemplified in the aban- 



92 EDUCATION. 

donment of that intensely stupid custom, the 
teaching of grammar to children. As M. Mar- 
cel says: — "It may without hesitation be af- 
firmed that grammar is not the stepping- 
stone, but the finishing instrument." As Mr. 
Wyse argues: — " Grammar and Syntax are a 
collection of laws and rules. Rules are gath- 
ered from practice : they are the results of in- 
duction to which we come by long obser- 
vation and comparison of facts. It is, in 
fine, the science, the philosophy of language. 
In following the process of nature, neither in- 
dividuals nor nations ever arrive at the 
science first. A language is spoken, and poe- 
try written, many years before either a 
grammar or prosody is even thought of. 
Men did not wait till Aristotle had con- 
structed his logic, to reason. In short, as 
grammar was made after language, so ought 
it to be taught after language : an inference 
which all who recognize the relationship be- 
tween the evolution of the race and of the in- 
dividual, will see to be unavoidable. 

Of new practices that have grown up dur- 
ing the decline of these old ones, the most 
important is the systematic culture of the 
powers of observation. After long ages of 
blindness men are at last seeing that the 
spontaneous activity of the observing facul- 
ties in children has a meaning and a use. 
What was once thought mere purposeless ac- 
tion or play, or mischief, as the case might be, 
is now recognized as the process of acquiring 
a knowledge on which all after-knowledge is 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 93 

based. Hence the well-conceived but ill-con- 
ducted system of object-lessons. The saying 
of Bacon, that physics is the mother of 
sciences, has come to have a meaning in edu- 
cation. Without an accurate acquaintance 
with the visible and tangible properties of 
things, our conceptions must be erroneous, 
our inferences fallacious, and our operations 
unsuccessful. "The education of the senses 
neglected, all after education partakes of a 
drowsiness, a haziness, an insufficiency which 
it is impossible to cure." Indeed, if we con- 
sider it, we shall find that exhaustive obser- 
vation is an element in all great success. It 
is not to artists, naturalists, and men of 
science only, that it is needful ; it is not only 
that the skilful physician depends on it for the 
correctness of his diagnosis, and that to the 
good engineer it is so important that some 
years in the workshop are prescribed for him ; 
but we may see that the philosopher also is 
fundamentally one who observes relationships 
of things which others had overlooked, and 
that the poet, too, is one who sees the fine 
facts in nature which all recognize when 
pointed out, but did not before remark. 
Nothing requires more to be insisted on than 
that vivid and complete impressions are all 
essential. No sound fabric of wisdom can be 
woven out of raw material. 

While the old method of presenting truths 
in the abstract has been falling out of use, 
there has been a corresponding adoption of 
the new method of presenting them in the 



94 EDUCATION. 

concrete. The rudimentary facts of exact 
science are now being learnt by direct intui- 
tion, as textures, and tastes, and colors are 
learnt. Employing the ball-frame for first 
lessons in arithmetic exemplifies this. It is 
well illustrated, too, in Professor De Morgan's 
mode of explaining the decimal notation. M. 
Marcel, rightly repudiating the old system of 
tables, teaches weights and measures by re- 
ferring to the actual yard and foot, pound 
and ounce, gallon and quart ; and lets the dis- 
covery of their relationships be experimental. 
The use of geographical models and models of 
the regular bodies, etc., as introductory to 
geography and geometry respectively, are 
facts of the same class. Manifestly a com- 
mon trait of these methods is, that they carry 
each child's mind through a process like that 
which the mind of humanity at large lias gone 
through. The truths of number, of form, of 
relationship in position, were all originally 
drawn from objects; and to present these 
truths to the child in the concrete is to let him 
learn them as the race learnt them. By and 
by, perhaps, it will be seen that he cannot 
possibly learn them in any other way; for 
that if he is made to repeat them as abstrac- 
tions, the abstractions can have no meaning 
for him, until he finds that they are sunply 
statements of what he intuitively discerns. 

But of all the changes taking place, the 
most significant is the growing desire to make 
the acquirement of knowledge pleasurable 
rather than painful — a desire based on the 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 95 

more or less distinct perception that at each age 
the intellectual action which a child likes is a 
healthful one for it ; and conversely. There is 
a spreading opinion that the rise of an appe- 
tite for any kind of knowledge implies that 
the unfolding mind has become fit to assimi- 
late it, and needs it for the purposes of growth ; 
and that on the other hand, the disgust felt 
towards any kind of knowledge is a sign 
either that it is prematurely presented, or 
that it is presented in an indigestible form- 
Hence the efforts to make early education 
amusing, and all education interesting. 
Hence the lectures on the value of play. 
Hence the defence of nursery rhymes, and 
fairy tales. Daily we more and more con- 
form our plans to juvenile opinion. Does the 
child like this or that kind of teaching ? does 
he take to it? we constantly ask. "His 
natural desire of variety should be indulged," 
says M. Marcel ; ' ' and the gratification of his 
curiosity should be combined with his im- 
provement." "Lessons," he again remarks, 
"should cease before the child evinces symp- 
toms of weariness. " And so with later educa- 
tion. Short breaks during school-hours, ex- 
cursions into the country, amusing lectures, 
choral songs — in these and many like traits, 
the change may be discerned. Asceticism is 
disappearing out of education as out of life ; 
and the usual test of political legislation— its 
tendency to promote happiness — is beginning 
to be, in a great degree, the test of legislation 
for the school and the nursery. 



96 EDUCATION. 

What now is the common characteristic of 
these several changes? Is it not an increas- 
ing conformity to the methods of nature? 
The rehnquishment of early forcing against 
which nature ever rebels, and the leaving of 
the first years for exercise of the limbs and 
senses, show this. The superseding of rote- 
learnt lessons by lessons orally and experi- 
mentally given, like those of the field and 
play -ground, shows this. The disuse of rule- 
teaching, and the adoption of teaching by 
principles — that is, the leaving of generahza- 
tion until there are particulars to base them 
on — show this. The system of object-lessons 
shows this. The teaching of the rudiments 
of science in the concrete instead of the ab- 
stract, shows this. And above all, this ten- 
dency is shown in the variously directed ef- 
forts to present knowledge in attractive forms, 
and so to make the acquirement of it pleas- 
urable. For as it is the order of nature in all 
creatures that the gratification accompany- 
ing the fulfilment of needful functions serves 
as a stimulus to their fulfilment— as during the 
self -education of the young child, the delight 
taken in the biting of corals, and the pulling 
to pieces of toys, becomes the prom];)ter to ac- 
tions which teach it the properties of matter ; 
it follows that, in choosing the succession of 
subjects and the modes of instruction which 
most interest the pupil, we are fulfilling na- 
ture's behests, and adjusting our proceedings 
to the laws of life. 

Thus, then, we are on the highway towards 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 97 

the doctrine long ago enunciated by Pesta- 
lozzi, that ahke in its order and its methods, 
education must conform to the natiiral proc- 
ess of mental evolution— that there is a cer- 
tain sequence in which the faculties sponta- 
neously develop, and a certain kind of knowl- 
edge which each requires during its develop- 
ment ; and that it is for us to ascertain this 
sequence, and supplj^ this knowledge. All 
the improvements above alluded to are par- 
tial applications of this general principle. A 
nebulous perception of it now prevails among 
teachers ; and it is daily more insisted on in 
educational works. "The method of nature 
is the archetype of all methods," says M. 
Marcel. " The vital principle in the pursuit 
is to enable the pupil rightly to instruct him- 
self," writes Mr. Wyse. The more science 
familiarizes us with the constitution of things 
the more do we see in them an inherent self- 
sufiicingness. A higher knowledge tends 
continually to limit our interference with the 
processes of life. As in medicine the old 
"heroic treatment " has given place to mild 
treatment, and often no treatment save a 
normal regimen — as we have found that it is 
not needful to mould the bodies of babes by 
bandaging them in papoose fashion or other- 
wise—as in jails it is being discovered that 
no cunningly devised discipline of ours is so 
efficient in producing reformation as the 
natural discipline, the making prisoners main- 
tain themselves by productive labor ; so in 
education we are finding that success is to be 
7 



98 EDUCATION, 

achieved only by rendering our measures 
subservient to that spontaneous unfolding 
which all minds go through m their progress 
to maturity. 

Of course, this fundamental principle of 
tuition, that the ai-rangement of matter and 
method must correspond with the order of 
evolution and mode of activity of the facul- 
ties — a principle so obviously true, that once 
stated it seems almost self-evident — has never 
been wholly disregarded. Teachers have 
unavoidably made their school -courses coin- 
cide with it in some degree, for the simple 
reason that education is possible only on that 
condition. Boys were never taught the rule- 
of -three until after they had learnt addition. 
They were not set to write exercises before 
they had got into their copy-books. Conic 
sections have always been preceded by Eu- 
clid. But the error of the old methods con- 
sists in this, that they do not recognize in de- 
tail what they are obliged to recognize in the 
general. Yet the principle applies through- 
out. If from the time when a child is able to 
conceive two things as related in position, 
years must elapse before it can form a true 
concept of the earth, as a sphere made up of 
land and sea, covered with mountains, forests, 
rivers, and cities, revolving on its axis, and 
sweeping round the sun — if it gets from the 
one concept to the other by degrees — if the 
intermediate concepts which it forms are 
consecutively larger and more complicated; 
is it not manifest that there is a general sue- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 99 

cession through which only it can pass ; that 
each larger concept is made by the combina- 
tion of smaller ones, and presupposes them ; 
and that to present any of these compound 
concepts before the child is in possession of 
its constituent ones, is only less absurd than 
to present the final concept of the series be- 
fore the initial one? In the mastering of 
every subject some course of increasingly 
complex ideas has to be gone through. The 
evolution of the corresponding faculties con- 
sists in the assimilation of these; which in 
any true sense, is impossible without they are 
put into the mind in the normal order. And 
when this order is not followed, the result is, 
that they are received with apathy or dis- 
gust ; and that unless the pupil is intelligent 
enough to eventually fill up the gaps himself, 
they lie in his memory as dead facts, callable 
of being turned to little or no use. 

' ' Why trouble ourselves about any curric- 
ulum at all? " it may be asked. " If it be triie 
that the mind like the body has a predeter- 
mined course of evolution, — if it unfolds 
spontaneously — if its successive desires for 
this or that kind of information arise when 
these are severally required for its nutrition, 
— if there thus exists in itself a prompter to 
the right species of activity at the right time ; 
why interfere in any way ? Why not leave 
children tvJiolly to the discipline of nature? — 
why not remain quite passive and let them 
get knowledge as they best can? — why not be 
consistent throughout ? " This is an awkward 



100 EDUCATION. 

looking question. Plausibly implying as it 
does, that a system of complete laissez-faire 
is the logical outcome of the doctrines set 
forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them 
by reductip ad absurdum. In truth, how- 
ever, they do not, when rightly understood, 
commit us to any such untenable position. 
A glance at the physical analogies will clearly 
show this. It is a general law of all life that 
the more complex the organism to be pro- 
duced, the longer the period during which it 
is dependent on a parent organism for food 
and protection. The contrast between the 
minute, rapidly-formed, and self -moving 
spore of a conferva, and the slowly devel- 
oped seed of a tree, with its multiplied envel- 
opes and large stock of nutriment laid by to 
nourish the germ during its first stages of 
growth, illustrates this law in its application 
to the vegetable world. Among animal or- 
ganisms we may trace it in a series of con- 
trasts from the monad whose spontaneously- 
divided halves are as self-sufficing the mo- 
ment after their separation as was the origi- 
nal whole; up to man, whose offspring not 
only passes through a protracted gestation, 
and subsequently long depends on the breast 
for sustenance ; but after that must have its 
food artificially administered; must, after it 
has learned to feed itself, continue to have 
bread, clothing, and shelter provided; and 
does not acquire the power of complete self- 
support until a time varying from fifteen to 
twenty years after its birth. Now this law 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 101 

applies to the mind as to the body. For 
mental pabulum also, every higher creature, 
and especially man, is at first dependent on 
adult aid. Lacking the ability to move 
about, the babe is as powerless to get mate- 
rials on which to exercise its perceptions as it 
is to get supplies for its stomach. Unable to 
prepare its own food, it is in like maimer un- 
able to reduce many kinds of knowledge to a 
fit form for assimilation. The language 
through which all higher truths are to be 
gained it wholly derives from those surround- 
ing it. And we see in such an example as 
the Wild Boy of xlveyron, the arrest of de- 
velopment that results when no help is re- 
ceived from parents and nurses. Thus, in 
providing from day to day the right kind of 
facts, prepared in the right manner, and giv- 
ing them in due abundance at appropriate in- 
tervals, there is as much scope for active min- 
istration to a child's mind as to its body. In 
either case it is the chief function of parents 
to see that the conditions requisite to growth 
are maintained. And, as in supplying ali- 
ment, and clothing, and shelter, they may 
fulfil this function without at all interfering 
with the spontaneous development of the 
limbs and viscera either in their order or 
mode ; so they may supply sounds for imita- 
tion, objects for examination, books for read- 
ing, problems for solution, and, if they use 
neither direct nor indirect coercion, may do 
this without in any way disturbing the nor- 
mal process of mental e/olution; or rather, 



102 EDUCATION, 

may greatly facilitate that process. Hence 
the admission of the doctrines enunciated 
does not, as some might argue, involve the 
abandonment of all teaching ; but leaves am- 
ple room for an active and elaborate course 
of culture. 

Passing from generalities to special consid- 
erations it is to be remarked that in practice, 
the Pestalozzian system seems scarcely to 
have fulfilled the promise of its theory. We 
hear of children not at all interested in its 
lessons, — disgusted with them rather; and, 
so far as we can gather, the Pestalozzian 
schools have not turned out any unusual pro- 
portion of distinguished men, — if even they 
have reached the average. We are not sur- 
prised at this. The success of every appli- 
ance depends mainly upon the intelligence 
with which it is used. It is a trite remark, 
that, having the choicest tools, an unskilful 
artisan will botch his work ; and bad teachers 
will fail even with the best methods. In- 
deed, the goodness of the method becomes in 
such case a cause of failure; as, to continue 
the simile, the perfection of the tool becomes 
in undisciplined hands a source of imperfec- 
tion in results. A simple unchanging, al- 
most mechanical routine of tuition may be 
carried out by the commonest intellects, w4th 
such small beneficial effect as it is capable of 
producing; but a complete system, — a system 
as heterogeneous in its appliances as the mind 
in its faculties, — a system proposing a special 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 103 

ineans for each special end, demands for its 
right employment powers such as few'teachers 
possess. The mistress of a dame-school can 
hear spelling-lessons ; any hedge-schoolmaster 
can drill boys in the multiplication-table ; but 
to teach spelling rightly by using the powers of 
the letters instead of their names, or to instruct 
in numerical combinations by experimental 
synthesis, a modicum of understanding is 
needful : and to pursue a like rational course 
throughout the entire range of studies, asks 
an amount of judgment, of invention, of 
intellectual sympathy, of analytical facul- 
ty, which we shall never see applied to it 
while the tutorial office is held in such small 
esteem. The true education is practicable 
only to the true philosopher. Judge, then, 
what prospect a philosophical method now 
has of being acted out ! Knowing so little as 
we yet do of Psychology, and ignorant as our 
teachers are of that little, what chance has a 
system which requires Psychology for its 
basis? 

Further hindrance and discouragement has 
arisen from confounding the Pestalozzian 
principle with the forms in which it has been 
embodied. Because particular plans have 
not answered expectation, discredit has been 
cast upon the doctrine associated with them ; 
no inquiry being made whether these plans 
truly conform to such doctrine. Judging as 
usual by the concrete rather than the ab- 
stract, men have blamed the theory for the 
bunglings of the practice. It is as though 



104 EDUCATION. 

Papin's futile attempt to construct a steam- 
engine had been held to prove that steam 
could not be used as a motive power. Let it 
be constantly borne in mind that while right 
in his fundamental ideas Pestalozzi was not 
therefore right in all his applications of them : 
and we believe the fact to be that he was oft- 
en wrong. As described even by his admir- 
ers, Pestalozzi was a man of partial intuitions, 
a man who had occasional flashes of insight, 
rather than a man of systematic thought. 
His first great success at Stantz was achieved 
when he had no books or appliances of ordi- 
nary teaching, and when " the only object of 
his attention was to find out at each moment 
what instruction his children stood peculiarly 
in need of, and what was the best manner of 
connecting it with the knowledge they already 
possessed." Much of his power was due, not 
to calmly reasoned-out plans of culture, but 
to his profound sympathy, wiiich gave him 
an instinctive perception of childish needs 
and difficulties. He lacked the ability logi- 
cally to co-ordinate and develop the truths 
which he thus f i^m time to time laid hold of ; 
and had in great measure to leave this to his 
assistants, Kruesi, Tobler, Buss, Niederer, and 
Schmid. The result is that in their details 
his own plans, and those vicariously devised, 
contain numerous crudities and inconsisten- 
cies. His nursery-method, described in ' ' The 
Mother's Manual," beginning as it does with 
a nomenclature of the different parts of the 
body, and proceeding next to specify their 



/ INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 105 

relative positions, and next their connections, 
may be proved not at all in accordance with 
the initial stages of mental evolution. His 
process of teaching the mother tongue by for- 
mal exercises in the meanings of words and 
in the construction of sentences, is quite 
needless, and must entail on the pupil loss of 
time, labor, and happiness. His proposed 
mode of teaching geography is utterly un- 
pestalozzian. And often where his plans are 
essentially sound they are either incomplete 
or vitiated by some remnant of the old regime. 
While, therefore, we would defend in its en- 
tire extent the general doctrine which Pes- 
talozzi inaugurated, we think great evil likely 
to result from an uncritical reception of his 
specific devices. That tendency which man- 
kind constantly exhibit to canonize the forms 
and practices along with which any great 
truth has been bequeathed to them, — their 
liability to prostrate their intellects before the 
prophet, and swear by his every word, — their 
proneness to mistake the clothing of the idea 
for the idea itself ; renders it needful to insist 
strongly upon the distinction between the 
fundamental principle of the Pestalozzian 
system, and the set of expedients devised for 
its practice: and to suggest that while the 
one may be considered as established, the 
other is probably nothing but an adumbra- 
tion of the normal course. Indeed, on look- 
ing at the state of our knowledge we may be 
quite sure that this is the case. Before our 
educational methods can be made to harmo' 



106 EDUCATION, 

niz8 in character and arrangement with the 
faculties in their mode and order of unfold- 
ing, it is first needful that we ascertain with 
some completeness how the faculties do un- 
fold. At present our knowledge of the matter 
extends only to a few general notions. These 
general notions must be developed in detail, — 
must be ti-ansformed into a multitude of spe- 
cific propositions, before we can be said to 
possess that scieiice on which the art of edu- 
cation must be based. And then when we 
have definitely made out in what succession, 
and m what combinations the mental powers 
become active, it remains to choose out of the 
many possible ways of exercising each of 
them that which best conforms to its natural 
mode of action. Evidently, therefore, it is 
not to be supposed that even our most ad- 
vanced modes of teaching are the right ones, 
or nearly the right ones. 

Bearing in mind then this distinction be- 
tween the principle and the practice of Pesta- 
lozzi, and inferring fi*om the grounds assigned 
that the last must necessarily be very defec- 
tive, the reader will rate at its true worth the 
dissatisfaction with the system which some 
have expressed; and will see that the due re- 
alization of the Pestalozzian idea remains to 
be achieved. Shoidd he argue, however, from 
what has just been said that no such re?iiza- 
tion is at present practicable, and that all ef- 
fort ought to be devoted to the preluninary 
inquiry ; we reply, that though it is not pos- 
sible for a scheme of culture to be perfected 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 107 

either in matter or form until a rational Psy- 
chology has been established, it is possible, 
with the aid of certain guiding principles, to 
make empirical approximations towards a 
perfect scheme. To prepare the way for fur- 
ther research we will now specify these prin- 
ciples. Some of them have already been 
more or less distinctly implied in the forego- 
ing pages; but it will be well here to state 
them all in logical order. 

1. That in education we should proceed 
fix)m the simple to the complex is a truth 
which has always been to some extent acted 
upon; not professedly, indeed, nor by any 
means consistently. The mind grows. Like 
all things that grow it progresses from the 
homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and a 
normal training system being an objective 
counterpart of this subjective process, must 
exhibit the like progression. Moreover, re- 
garding it from this point of view, we may 
see that this formula has much wider appli- 
cations than at first appears. For its ration- 
ale involves not only that we should proceed 
from the single to the combined in the teach- 
ing of each branch of knowledge ; but that we 
should do the like with knowledge as a whole. 
As the mind, consisting at first of but few ac- 
tive faculties, has its later-completed facul- 
ties successively awakened, and ultimately 
comes to have all its faculties in simultaneous 
action ; it follows that our teaching should be- 
gin with but few subjects at once, and sue- 



108 EDUCATION. 

cessively adding to these, should finally carry 
on all subjects abreast — that not only in its 
details should education proceed from the 
simple to the complex, but in its ensemble 
also. 

2. To say that our lessons ought to start 
from the concrete and end in the abstract, 
may be considered as in part a repetition of 
the foregoing. Nevertheless it is a maxim 
that needs to be stated : if with no other view, 
then with the view of showing in certain 
cases what are truly the simple and the com- 
plex. For unfortunately there has been 
much misunderstanding on this point. Gen- 
eral formulas which men have devised to ex- 
press groups of details, and which have sev- 
erally simplified their conceptions by uniting 
many facts into one fact, they have supposed 
must simplify the conceptions of the child 
also ; quite forgetting that a generalization is 
simple only in comparison with the whole 
mass of particular truths it comprehends — 
that it is more complex than any one of these 
truths taken singly — that only after many of 
these single truths have been acquired does 
the generalization ease the memory and help 
the reason — and that to the child not possess- 
ing these single truths it is necessarily a mys- 
tery. Thus confounding two kinds of simpli- 
fication, teachers have constantly erred by 
setting out with ' ' first principles " : a proceed- 
ing^ssentially, though not apparently, at va- 
riance with the primary rule ; which implies 
that the mind should be introduced to princi- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 109 

pies through the medium of examples, and so 
should be led from the particular to the gen- 
eral—from the concrete to the abstract. 

3. The education of the child must accord 
both in mode and arrangement with the edu- 
cation of mankind as considered historically ; 
or in other words, the genesis of knowledge 
in the individual must follow the same course 
as the genesis of knowledge in the race. To 
M. Comte we believe society owes the enunci- 
ation of this doctrine— a doctrine which we 
may accept without committing ourselves to 
his theory of the genesis of knowledge either 
in its causes or its order. In support of this 
doctrine two reasons may be assigned, either 
of them sufficient to establish it. One is de- 
ducible from the law of hereditary transmis- 
sion as considered in its wider consequences. 
For if it be true that men exhibit likeness to 
ancestry both in aspect and character— if it 
be true that certain mental manifestations, as 
insanity, will occur in successive members of 
the same family at the same age— if , passing 
from individual cases in which the traits of 
many dead ancestors mixing with those of a 
few living ones greatly obscure the law, we 
turn to national types, and remark how the 
contrasts between them are persistent from 
age to age— if we remember that these re- 
spective types came from a common stock, 
and that hence the present marked dif- 
ferences between them must have arisen 
from the action of modifying circumstan- 
ces upon successive generations who sev- 



110 EDUCATION. 

erally transmitted the accumulated effects 
to their descendants — if we find the differ- 
ences to be now organic, so that the French 
child grows into a French man even when 
brought up among strangers — and if the gen- 
eral fact thus illustrated is true of the whole 
nature, intellect inclusive ; then it follows that 
if there be an order in which the human race 
has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, 
there will arise in every child an aptitude to 
acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same 
order. So that even were the order intrinsi- 
cally indifferent, it would facilitate education 
to lead the individual mind through the steps 
traversed by the general mind. Bat the order 
is not intrinsically indifferent ; and hence the 
fundamental reason why education should be 
a repetition of civilization in little. It is alike 
provable that the historical sequence was, in 
its main outlines, a necessary one ; and that 
the causes which determined it apply to the 
child as to the race. Not to specify these 
causes in detail, it will suffice here to point 
out that as the mind of humanity placed in the 
midst of x)henomena and striving to compre- 
hend them, has, after endless comparisons, 
speculations, experiments, and theories, 
reached its present knowledge of each subject 
by a specific route ; it may rationally be in- 
ferred that the relationship between mind and 
phenomena is such as to prevent this knowl- 
edge from being reached by any other route ; 
and that as each child's mind stands in this 
same relationship to phenomena, they can be 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. Ill 

accessible to it only through the same route. 
Hence in deciding upon the right method of 
education, an inquky into the method of civ- 
ilization will help to guide us. 

4. One of the conclusions to which such an 
inquiry leads is, that in each branch of in- 
struction we should proceed from the empiri- 
cal to the rational. A leading fact in human 
progress is, that every science is evolved out 
of its corresponding art. It results from the 
necessity we are under, both individually and 
as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of 
the concrete, that there must be practice and 
an accruing experience with its empirical gen- 
eralizations, before there can be science. 
Science is organized knowledge; and before 
knowledge can be organized, some of it must 
first be possessed. Every study, therefore, 
should have a purely experimental introduc- 
tion ; and only after an ample fund of obser- 
vations has been accumulated, should reason- 
ing begin. As illustrative applications of this 
rule, we may instance the modern course of 
placing grammar, not before language, but 
after it ; or the ordinary custom of prefa,cing 
perspective by practical drawing. By and by 
further applications of it will be indicated. 

5. A second corollary from the foregomg 
general principle, and one which cannot be 

,too strenuously insisted upon, is, that in edu- 
cation the process of self -development should 
be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children 
should be led to make their own investiga- 
tions, and to draw their own inferences. 



112 EDUCATION, 

They should be told as little as possible, and 
induced to discover as much as possible. Hu- 
manity has progressed solely by self -instruc- 
tion; and that to achieve the best results, 
each mind must progress somewhat after the 
same fashion, is continually proved by tlie 
marked success of self-made men. Those'who 
have been brought up under the ordinary 
school-drill, and have carried away with them 
the idea that education is practicable only in 
that style, will think it hopeless to make chil- 
dren their own teachers. If, however, they 
will call to mind that the all-important knowl- 
edge of surrounding objects which a child gets 
in its early years is got without help — if they 
will remember that the child is self-taught in 
the use of its mother tongue— if they will es- 
timate the amount of that experience of life, 
that out-of -school wisdom, which every boy 
gathers for himself— if they will mark the un- 
usual intelligence of the uncared-for London 
gamin, as shown in all the directions in which 
his faculties have been tasked— if further, 
they will think how many minds have strug- 
gled up unaided, not only through the mys- 
teries of our irrationally planned curriculum, 
but through hosts of other obstacles besides ; 
they will find it a not unreasonable conclusion, 
that if the subjects be put before him in right 
order and right form, any pupil of ordinary^^ 
capacity will surmount his successive difficul- 
ties with but little assistance. Who indeed 
can watch the ceaseless observation, and in- 
quiry, and inference going on in a child's 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 113 

mind, or listen to its acute remarks on matters 
within the range of its faculties, without per- 
ceiving that these powei-s which it manifests, 
if brought to bear systematically upon any 
studies icithiii the same range, would readily 
master them without help ? This need for per- 
petual telling is the result of our stupidity, 
not of the child's. We drag it away from the 
facts in which it is interested, and which it is 
actively assimilating of itself; we put before 
it facts far too complex for it to understand, 
and therefore distasteful to it ; finding that it 
will not voluntarily acquire these facts, we 
thrust them into its mind by force of threats 
and punishment ; by thus denying the knowl- 
edge it craves, and cramming it with knowl- 
edge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid 
state of its faculties, and a consequent disgust 
for knowledge in general ; and when, as aore- 
sult partly of the stolid indolence we have 
brought on, and partly of still continued un- 
fitness in its studies, the child can understand 
nothing without explanation, and becomes a 
mere passive recipient of our instruction, we 
infer that education must necessarily be car- 
ried on thus. Having by our method induced 
helplessness, we straightway make the help- 
lessness a reason for our method. Clearly 
then the experience of pedagogues cannot ra- 
tionally be quoted against the doctrine we are 
defending. And whoever sees this will see 
that we may safely follow the method of na- 
ture throughout— may, by a skilful ministra- 
tion, make the mind as self -developing in its 
8 



114 EDUCATION. 

later stages as it is in its earlier ones ; and that 
only by doing this can we produce the high- 
est power and activity. 

6. As a final test by which to judge any 
plan of culture, should come the question, — 
Does it create a pleasurable excitement in the 
pupils? When in doubt whether a particular 
mode or arrangement is or is not more in har- 
mony with the foregoing principles than some 
other, we may safely abide by this criterion. 
Even when, as considered theoretically, the 
proposed course seems the best, yet if it pro- 
duce no interest, or less interest than another 
course, we should relinquish it ; for a child's 
intellectual instincts are more trustworthy 
than our reasonings. In respect to the know- 
ing faculties, we may confidently trust in the 
general law, that under normal ^conditions, 
healthful action is pleasurable, while action 
which gives pain is not healthful. Though 
at present very incomj^letely conformed to by 
the emotional nature, yet by the intellectual 
nature, or at least by those parts of it which 
the child exhibits, this law is almost wholly 
conformed to. The repugnances to this and 
that study which vex the ordinary teacher, 
are not innate, but result from his unwise 
system. Fellenberg says, ' ' Experience has 
taught me that indole^ice in young persons is 
so directly opposite to thtir natural disposi- 
tion to activity, that unless it is the conse- 
quence of bad education, it is almost invari- 
ably connected with some constitutional de- 
fect." And the spontaneous activity to which 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 115 

children are thus prone, is simply the pursuit 
of those pleasures which the healthful exer- 
cise of the faculties gives. It is true that 
some of the higher mental powers as yet but 
little developed in the race, and congenitally 
possessed in any considerable degree only by 
the most advanced, are indisposed to the 
amount of exertion required of them. But 
these, in virtue of their very complexity, will 
in a normal course of culture, come last into 
exercise, and will therefore have no demands 
made upon them until the pupil has arrived 
at an age when ulterior motives can be 
brought into play, and an indirect pleasure 
made to counterbalance a direct displeasure. 
With all faculties lower than these, however, 
the direct gratification consequent on activity 
is the normal stimulus ; and under good man- 
agement the only needful stimulus. When 
we are obliged to fall back on some other, we 
must take the fact as evidence that we are on 
the wrong track. Experience is daily show- 
ing with greater clearness that there is always 
a method to be found productive of interest — 
even of delight; and it ever turns out that 
this is the method proved by all other tests to 
be the right one. 

With most, these guiding principles will 
weigh but little if left in this abstract form. 
Partly, therefore, to exemplify their applica- 
tion, and partly with a view of making sun- 
dry specific suggestions, we propose now to 
pass from the theory of education to the prac- 
tice of it. 



116 EDUCATION. 

It w-as the opinion of Pestalozzi — an opinion 
which has ever since his day been gaining 
ground — that education of some kind should 
begin from the cradle. Whoever has watched 
with any discernment, the wide-eyed gaze of 
the infant at surrounding objects, knows very 
well that education does begin thus early, 
whether we intend it or not ; and that these 
fingerings and suckings of everything it can 
lay hold of, these open-mouthed listenings to 
every sound, are the first steps in the series 
which ends in the discovery of unseen planets, 
the invention of calculating engines, the pro- 
duction of great paintings, or the composition 
of symphonies and operas. This activity of 
the faculties from the very first being sponta- 
neous and inevitable, the question is whether 
we shall supply in due variety the materials 
on which they may exercise themselves ; and 
to the question so put, none but an affirmative 
answer can be given. As before said, how- 
ever, agreement with Pestalozzi's theory does 
not involve agreement with his practice ; and 
here occurs a case in point. Treating of in- 
struction in spelling he says : — 

"The spelling-book ought, therefore, to contain all the 
sounds of the language, and these ought to be taught in every 
family from the earliest infancy. The child who learns his 
spelling-book ought to repeat them to the infant in the cradle, 
before it is able to pronounce even one of them, so that they 
may be deeply impressed upon its mind by frequent repeti- 
tion." 

Joining this with the suggestions for *'a 
nursery -method," as set down in his "Moth- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 117 

er's Manual," in which he makes the names, 
positions, connections, ixumbers, properties, 
and uses of the Hmbs and body his first les- 
sons, it becomes clear that Pestalozzi's notions 
on early mental development were too crude 
to eiiable him to devise judicious planes. Let 
us inquire into the course which Psychology 
dictates. 

The earliest impressions which the mind can 
assimilate, are those given to it by the un- 
decomposable sensations— resistance, light, 
sound, etc. Manifestly decomposable states 
of consciousness cannot exist before the states 
of consciousness out of which they are com- 
posed. There can be no idea of form un- 
til some familiarity with light in its grada- 
tions and qualities, or resistance in its differ- 
ent intensities, has been acquired ; for, as has 
been long known, we recognize visible form 
by means of varieties of light, and tangible 
form by means of varieties of resistance. Sim- 
ilarly, no articulate sound is cognizable until 
the inarticulate sounds which go to make it 
up have been learned. And thus must it be 
in every other case. Following, therefore, the 
necessary law of progression from the simple 
to the complex, we should provide for the in- 
fant a sufficiency of objects presenting differ- 
ent degrees and kinds of resistance, a suffi- 
ciency of objects reflecting different amounts 
and qualities of light, and a sufficiency of 
sounds contrasted in their loudness, their 
pitch and their timbre. How fully this d 
priori conclusion is confirmed by infantile in- 



118 EDUCATION. 

stincts all will see on being reminded of the 
delight which every young child has in biting 
its toys, in feeling its brother's bright jacket- 
buttons, and pulling papa's whiskers — how 
absorbed it becomes in gazing at any gaudily 
painted object, to which it applies the word 
*' pretty," when it can pronounce it, wholly in 
virtue of the bright colors— and how its face 
broadens into a laugh at the tattlings of its 
nurse, the snapping of a visitor's fingers, or 
any sound which it has not before heard. 
Fortunately, the ordinary practices of the 
nursery fulfil these early requirements of edu- 
cation to a considerable degree. Much, how- 
ever, remains to be done ; and it is of more 
Importance that it should be done than at 
first appears. Every faculty during the pe- 
riod of its greatest activity — the period in 
which it is spontaneously evolving itself — is 
capable of receiving more vivid impressions 
than at any other period. Moreover, as these 
simplest elements must eventually be mas- 
tered, and as the mastery of them whenever 
achieved must take time, it becomes an econ- 
omy of time to occupy this first stage of child- 
hood, during which no other intellectual ac- 
tion is possible, in gaining a complete famil- 
iarity with them in all their modifications. 
Add to which, that both temper and health 
wdll be improved by the continual gratifica- 
tion resulting from a due supply of these im- 
pressions which every child so greedily assim- 
ilates. Space, could it be spared, might here 
be well filled by some suggestions towards a 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 119 

more systematic ministration to these sim- 
plest of the perceptions. But it must suffice 
to point out that any such ministration ought 
to be based upon the general truth that in the 
development of every faculty, markedly con- 
trasted impressions are the first to be distin- 
guished : that hence sounds greatly differing 
in loudness and pitch, colors very remote 
from each other, and substances widely unlike 
in hardness or texture, should be. the first sup- 
plied ; and that in each case the progression 
must be by slow degrees to impressions more 
nearly allied. 

Passing on to object-lessens, which mani- 
festly^ form a natural continuation of this 
primary culture of the senses, it is to be re- 
marked, that the system conmionly pursued 
is wholly at variance with the method of na- 
ture, as alike exhibited in infancy, in adult 
life, and in the course of civilization. ''The 
child," says M. Marcel, "must be shown how 
all the parts of an object are connected, etc. ; " 
and the various manuals of these object-les- 
sons severally contain lists of the facts which 
the child is to be told respecting each of the 
things put before it. Now it needs but a 
glance at the daily life of the infant to see 
that all the knowledge of things which is 
gained before the acquirement of speech, is 
self -gained — that the qualities of hardness and 
weight associated with certain visual appear- 
ances, the possession of particular forms and 
colors by particular persons, the production 
ofsj)ecial sounds by animals of special as- 



120 EDUCATION. 

pects, are phenomena which it observes for 
itself. In manhood too, when there are no 
longer teachers at hand, the observations and 
inferences required for daily guidance, must 
be made unhelped ; and success in life depends 
upon the accuracy and completeness with 
which they are made. Is it probable then, 
that while the process displayed in the evolu- 
tion of humanity at large, is repeated alike 
by the infant and the man, a reverse process 
must be followed during the period betv^^een 
infancy and manhood? and that too, even in 
so simple a thing as learning the properties 
of objects? Is it not obvious, on the contrary, 
that one method must be pursued throughout? 
And is not nature perpetually thrusting this 
method upon us, if Ave had but the wit to see 
it, and the humility to adopt it? What can 
be more manifest than the desire of children 
for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the 
infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your 
face the toy it holds, that you too may look 
at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet 
finger on the table, how it turns and looks at 
you; does it again, and again looks at you; 
thus saying as clearly as it can — " Hear, this 
new sound. " Watch how the elder children 
come into the room exclaiming — "Mamma, 
see what a curious thing," "Mamma, look at 
this," "Mamma, look at that;" and would 
continue the habit, did not the silly mamira 
tell them not to tease her. Observe how, 
when out with the nurse-maid, each little one 
runs up to her with the new flower it has 



INTELLECTUAL EBU CATION. 121 

gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and to 
get her also, to say it is pretty. Listen to the 
eager volubility with which every urchin de- 
scribes any novelty he has been to see, if only 
he can find some one who will attend with 
any interest. Does not the induction lie on 
the surface? Is it not clear that we must con- 
form our course to these intellectual instincts 
—that we must just sj^stematize the natural 
process — that we must listen to all the child 
has to tell us about each object, must induce 
it to say everything it can think of about 
such object, must occasionally draw its atten- 
tion to facts it has not yet observed, with the 
view of leading it to notice them itself when- 
ever they recur, and must go on by and by to 
indicate or supply new series of things for a 
like exhaustive examination? See the way in 
which, on this method, the intelligent mother 
conducts her lessons. Step by step she famil- 
iarizes her little boy with the names of the 
simpler attributes, hardness, softness, color, 
taste, size, etc., in doing which she finds him 
eagerly help by bringing this to show her that 
it is red, and the other to make her feel that 
it is hard, as fast as she gives him words for 
these properties. Each additional property, 
as she draws his attention to it in some fresh 
thing which he brings her, she takes care to 
mention in connection with those he already 
knows ; so that by the natural tendency to 
imitate, he may get into the habit of repeat- 
ing them one affer another. Gradually as 
there occur cases in which he omits to name 



122 EDUCATION. 

one or more of the properties he has become 
acquainted with, she introduces the practice 
of asking him whether there is not something 
more that he can tell her about the thing he 
has got. Probably he does not understand. 
After letting him puzzle awhile she tells him ; 
perhaps laughing at him at him a little for 
his failure. A few recurrences of this, and 
he perceives what is to be done. When next 
she says she knows something more about the 
object than he has told her, his pride is roused ; 
he looks at it intently ; he thinks over all that 
he has heard ; and the problem being easy, 
presently finds it out. He is full of glee at 
his success, and she sympathizes with him. 
In common with every child, he delights in 
the discovery of his powers. He wishes for 
more victories, aiid goes in quest of more 
things about which to tell her. As his facul- 
ties unfold she adds quality after quality to 
his list : progressing from hardness and soft- 
ness to roughness and smoothness, from color 
to polish, from simple bodies to composite 
ones — thus constantly complicating the prob- 
lem as he gains competence, constantly tax- 
ing his attention and memory to a greater ex- 
tent, constantly maintaining his interest by 
supplying him with new impressions such as 
his mind can assimilate, and constantly grati- 
fying him by conquests over such small diffi- 
culties as he can master. In doing this she 
is manifestly but following out that sponta- 
neous process that was going on during a still 
earlier period — simply aiding self -evolution ; 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 123 

and is aiding it in the mode suggested by the 
boy's instinctive behavior to her. Manifestly, 
too, the course she is pursuing is the one best 
calculated to establish a habit of exhaustive 
observation ; which is the professed aim of 
these lessons. To tell a child this and to show 
it the other, is not to teach it how to observe, 
but to make it a mere recipient of another's 
observations: a proceeding which weakens 
rather than strengthens its powers of self- 
instruction — which deprives it of the pleas- 
ures resulting from successful activity — which 
presents this all-attractive knowledge under 
the aspect of formal tuition — and which thus 
generates that indifference and even disgust 
with which these object-lessons are not un- 
frequently regarded. On the other hand, to 
pursue the course above described is simply 
to guide the intellect to its appropriate food ; 
to join with the intellectual appetites their 
natural adjuncts — amour propre and the de- 
sire for sympathy ; to induce by the union of 
all these an intensity of attention which in- 
sures perceptions alike vivid and complete ; 
and to habituate the mind from the beginning 
to that practice of self-help which it must 
ultimately follow. 

Object-lessons should not only be carried 
on after quite a different fashion from that 
conunonly pursued, but should be extended 
to a range of things far wider, and continue 
to a period far later, than now. They should 
not be limited to the contents of the house ; 
but should include those of the fields and 



124 EDUCATION. 

hedges, the quarry and the sea-shore. They 
should not cease with early childhood; but 
should be so kept up during youth as insen- 
sibly to merge into the investigations of the 
naturalist and the man of science. Here 
again we have but to follow nature's leadings. 
Where ca.n be seen an intenser delight than 
that of children picking up new flowers and 
watching new insects, or hoarding pebbles 
and shells? And who is there but perceives 
that by sympathizing with them they maybe 
led on to any extent of inquiry into the qual- 
ities and structures of these things? Every 
botanist who has had children with him in 
the w^oods and the laues must have noticed 
how eagerly they joined in his pursuits, how 
keenly they searched out plants for liim, how 
intently they watched whilst he examined 
them, how they overwhelmed him with ques- 
tions. The consistent follower of Bacon — the 
"servant and interpreter of nature," Avill see 
that we ought modestly to adopt the course 
of culture thus indicated. Having gained 
due familiarity with the simpler properties of 
inorganic objects, the child should by the 
same process be led on to a like exhaustive 
examination of the things it picks up in its 
daily walks — the less complex facts they pre- 
sent being alone noticed at first: in plants, 
the color, number, and forms of the petals 
and shapes of the stalks and leaves: in in- 
sects, the numbers of the wings, legs, and an- 
tennae, and their colors. As these become 
fully appreciated and invariably observed, 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 125 

further facts may be successiTely introduced : 
in the one case, the numbers of stamens and 
pistils, the forms of the flowers, whether ra- 
dial or bilateral in symmetry, the arrange- 
ment and character of the leaves, whether 
opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile, 
smooth or hairy, serrated, toothed, or cre- 
nate ; in the other, the divisions of the body, 
the segments of the abdomen, the markings 
of the wings, the number of joints m the legs, 
and the forms of the smaller organs — the sys- 
tem pursued throughout being that of making 
it the child's ambition to say respecting every- 
thing it finds, all that can be said. Then when 
a fit age has been reached, the means of pre- 
serving these plants which have become so 
interesting in virtue of the knowledge ob- 
tained of them, may as a great favor be sup- 
plied ; and eventually, as a still greater favor, 
may also be supplied the apparatus needful 
for keeping the larvee of our common butter- 
flies and moths through their transformations 
— a practice which, as we can personally tes- 
tify, yields the highest gratiflcation ; is con- 
tinued with ardor for years ; when joined with 
the formation of an entomological collection, 
adds immense interest to Saturday -afternoon 
rambles; and forms an admirable introduc- 
tion to the study of physiology. 

We are quite prepared to hear from many 
that all this is throwing away time and en- 
ergy ; and that children would be much better 
occupied in writing their copies or learning 
their pence-tables, and so fitting themselves 



126 EDUCATION. 

for the business of life. We regret that such 
crude ideas of what constitutes education and 
such a narrow conception of utiHty, should 
still be generally prevalent. Saying nothing 
on the need for a systematic culture of the 
perceptions and the value of the practices 
above inculcated as subserving that need, we 
are prepared to defend them even on the 
score of the knowledge gained. If men are to 
be mere cits, mere porers over ledgers, with 
no ideas beyond their trades— if it is well that 
they should be as the cockney whose concep- 
tion of rural pleasures extends no further than 
sitting in a tea-garden smoking pipes and 
drinking porter ; or as the squire who thinks 
of woods as places for shooting in, of unculti- 
vated plants as nothing but weeds, and who 
classifies animals into game, vermin, and 
stock — then indeed it is needless for men to 
learn anything that does not directly help to 
replenish the till and fill the larder. But if 
there is a more worthy aim for us than to be 
drudges — if there are other uses in the things 
around us than their power to bring money — 
if there are higher faculties to be exercised 
than acquisitive and sensual ones — if the 
pleasures which poetry and art and science 
and philosophy can bring are of any moment 
— then is it desirable that the instinctive in- 
clination which every child shows to observe 
natural beauties and investigate natural phe- 
nomena should be encouraged. But this gross 
utilitarianism which is content to come into 
the world and quit it again without knowing 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 127 

what kind of a world it is or what it contains, 
may be met on its own ground. It will by 
and by be found that a knowledge of the laws 
of life is more important than any other 
knowledge whatever — that the laws of life 
include not only all bodily and mental pro- 
cesses, but by implication all the transactions 
of the house and the street, all commerce, all 
politics, all morals — and that therefore with- 
out a due acquaintance with them neither 
personal nor social conduct can be rightly reg- 
ulated. It will eventually be seen too, that 
the laws of life are essentially the same 
throughout the whole organic creation ; and 
further, that they cannot be properly under- 
stood in their complex manifestations until 
they have been studied in their simpler ones. 
And when this is seen, iu will be also seen that 
in aiding the child to acquire the out-of-door 
information for which it shows so great an 
avidity, and in encouraging the acquisition 
of such information throughout youth, we 
are simply inducing it to store up the raw 
material for future organization — the facts 
that will one day bring home to it with due 
force those great generalizations of science 
by which actions may be rightly guided. 

The spreading recognition of drawing as an 
element of education, is one amongst many 
signs of the more rational views on mental 
culture now beginning to prevail. Once 
more it may be remarked that teachers are at 
length adopting the course which nature has 
for ages been pressing upon their notice. The 



128 EDUCATION, 

spontaneous efforts made by children to rep- 
resent the men, houses, trees, and animals 
around them — on a slate if they can get noth- 
ing better, or with lead-pencil on paper, if 
they can beg them — are familiar to all. To 
be shown through a picture-book is one of 
their highest gratifications; and as usual, 
their strong imitative tendency presently 
generates in them the ambition to make pict- 
ures themselves also. This attempt to depict 
the striking things they see is a further in- 
stinctive exercise of the perceptions — a means 
whereby still greater accuracy and complete- 
ness of observation is induced. And alike by 
seeking to interest us in their discoveries of 
the sensible properties of things, and by their 
endeavors to draw, they solicit from us just 
that kind of culture which they most need. 

Had teachers been guided by nature's 
hints not only in the making of drawing a 
part of education, but in the choice of their 
modes of teaching it, they would have done 
still better than they have done. What is it 
that the child first tries to represent? Things 
that are large, things that are attractive in 
color, things round which its pleasurable as- 
sociations most cluster — human beings from 
whom it has received so many emotions, cows 
and dogs which interest by the many phenom- 
ena they present, houses that are hourly visible 
and strike by their size and contrast of parts. 
And which of all the processes of representa- 
tion gives it most delight? Coloring. Paper 
and pencil are good in default of something 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 129 

better ; but a box of paints and a brush — these 
are the treasures. The drawing of outhnes 
immediately becomes secondary to coloring — 
is gone through mainly with a view to the 
coloring ; and if leave can be got to color a 
book of prints, how great is the favor? Now, 
ridiculous as such a position will seem to 
drawing-masters, who postpone coloring and 
who teach form by a dreary discipline of 
copying lines, we believe that the course of 
culture thus indicated is the right one. That 
priority of color to form, which, as already 
pointed out, has a psychological basis, and in 
virtue of which psychological basis arises this 
strong preference in the child, should be- rec- 
ognized from the very beginning ; and from 
the very beginning also the things imitated 
should be real. That greater delight in color 
which is not only conspicuous in children 
but persists in most persons throughout 
life, should be continuously employed as 
the natural stimulus to the mastery of the 
comparatively difficult and unattractive 
form — should be the prospective reward for 
the achievement of form. And these in- 
stinctive attempts to represent interesting 
actualities should be all along encouraged ; in 
the conviction that as, by a widening expe- 
rience, smaller and more practicable objects 
become interesting they too will be attempt- 
ed ; and that so a gradual approximation ^all 
be made towards imitations having some re- 
semblance to the realities. No matter how 
grotesque the shapes produced: no matter 
9 



130 EDUCATION, 

how daubed and glaring the colors. The 
question is not whether the child is producing 
good drawings : the question is, whether it is 
develox^ing its faculties. It has first to gam 
some comniand over its fingers, some crude 
notions of likeness ; and this practice is better 
than any other for these ends ; seeing that it 
is the spontaneous and the interesting one. 
During these early years, be it remembered, 
no formal drawing-lessons are possible : shall 
we therefore repress, or neglect to a.id, these 
efforts at self -culture? or shall we encourage 
and guide them as normal exercises of the 
perceptions and the powers of manipulation? 
If by the supply of cheap woodcuts to be col- 
ored, and simple contour-maps to have their 
boundary lines tinted, we can not only pleas- 
urably draw out the faculty of color, but can 
incidentally produce some familiarity with 
the outlines of things and countries, and 
some ability to move the brush steadily ; and 
if by the supply of temptingly-painted objects 
we can keep up the instinctive practice of 
making representations, however rough, it 
must happen that by the time drawing is 
commonly commenced there will exist a fa- 
cility that would else have been absent. 
Time will have been gained; and trouble, 
both to teacher and pupil, saved. 

From all that has been said, it may be 
re^ily inferred that we wholly disapprove 
of the practice of drawing from copies^ and 
still more so of that formal discipline in mak- 
ing straight lines and curved lines and com- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 131 

pound lines, with which it is the fashion of 
some teachers to begin. We regret to find 
that the Society of Arts has recently, in its 
series of manuals on " Rudimentary Art-In- 
struction," given its countenance to an ele- 
mentary drawing-book, which is the most vi- 
cious in principle that we have seen. We re- 
fer to the " Outline from Outhne, or from the 
Flat," by John Bell, sculptor. As expressed 
in the prefatory note, this publication pro- 
poses "to place before the student a simple, 
yet logical mode of instruction ; " and to this 
end sets out with a number of definitions 
thus : — 

" A simple line in drawing is a thin mark drawn from one 
point to another, 

" Lines may be divided, as to their natm-e in drawing, into 
two classes: — 

" 1. Straight, which are marks that go the shortest road 
between two points, as A B. 

"3. Or Curved, which are marks which do not go the 
shortest road between two points, as C D," 

And so the introduction progresses to hori- 
zontal lines, perpendicular lines, oblique lines, 
angles of the several kinds, and the various fig- 
ures which lines and angles make up. The 
work is, in short, a grammar of form, with ex- 
ercises. And thus the system of commencing 
with a dry analysis of elements, which, in the 
teaching of language, has been exploded, is 
to be re-instituted in the teaching of drawing. 
The abstract is to be preliminary to the con- 
crete. Scientific conceptions are to precede 
empirical experiences. That this is an inver- 



132 EDUCATION. 

sion of the normal order, we need scarcely 
repeat. It has been well said concerning the 
custom of prefacing the art of speaking any 
tongue by a drilling in the parts of speech 
and their functions, that it is about as reason- 
able as prefacing the art of walking by a 
course of lessons on the bones, muscles, and 
nerves of the legs ; and much the same thing 
may be said of the proposal to preface the art 
of representing objects by a nomenclature 
and definitions of the lines which they yield 
on analysis. These technicahties are alike 
repulsive and needless. They render the 
study distasteful at the very outset ; and all 
with the view of teaching that, which, in the 
course of practice, will be learnt unconscious- 
ly. Just as the child incidentally gathers the 
meanings of ordinary words from the conver- 
sations going on around it, without the help 
of dictionaries ; so, from the remarks on ob- 
jects, pictures, and its own drawings, will it 
presently acquire, not only without effort but 
even pleasurably, those same scientific terms 
which, if presented at first, are a mystery 
and a weariness. 

If any dependence is to be placed upon the 
general principles of education that have 
been laid down, the process of learning to 
draw should be throughout continuous with 
those efforts of early childhood described 
above, as so worthy of encouragement. By 
the time that the voluntary practice thus ini- 
tiated has given some steadiness of hand, and 
some tolerable ideas of proportion, there will 



INTWLLECTUAL EDUCATION. 133 

have arisen a vague notion of body as pre- 
senting its three dimensions in perspective. 
And when, after sundry abortive, Chinese- 
like attempts to render this appearance on 
paper there has grown up a pretty clear per- 
ception of the thing to be achieved, and a de- 
sire to achieve it, a first lesson in empirical 
perspective may be given by means of the 
apparatus occasionally used in explaining 
perspective as a science. This sounds formid- 
able ; but the experiment is both comprehen- 
sive and interesting to any boy or girl of or- 
dinary intelligence. A plate of glass so 
framed as to stand vertically on the table, 
being placed before the pupil, and a book, or 
like simple object, laid on the other side of it, 
he is requested, whilst keeping the eye in one 
position, to make ink dots upon the glass, so 
that they may coincide with, or hide the 
corners of this object. He is then told to 
join these dots by lines ; on doing which he 
perceives that the lines he makes hide, or co- 
incide with, the outlines of the object. And 
then on being asked to put a sheet of paper 
on the other side of the glass, he discovers 
that the lines he has thus drawn represent 
the object as he saw it. They not only look 
like it, but he perceives that they must be 
like it, because he made them agree with its 
outlines ; and by removing the paper he can 
repeatedly convince himself that they do 
agree with its outlines. The fact is new and 
striking ; and serves him as an experimental 
demonstration, that lines of certain lengths, 



134 EDUCATION. 

placed in certain directions on a plane, can 
represent lines of other lengths, and having 
other directions in space. Subsequently, by 
gradually changing the position of the object 
he may be led to observe how some lines 
shorten and disappear, whilst others come 
into sight and lengthen. The convergence of 
parallel lines, and, indeed, all the leading facts 
of perspective may, from time to time, be simi- 
larly illustrated to him. If he has been duly 
accustomed to self-help, he will gladly, when 
it is suggested, make the attempt to draw one 
of these outlines upon paper, by the eye only ; 
and it may soon be made an exciting aim to 
produce, unassisted, a representation, as like 
as he can, to one subsequently sketched on 
the glass. Thus, without the unintelligent 
mechanical practice of copying other draw- 
ings, but by a method at once simple and at- 
tractive — rational, yet not abstract, a famil- 
iarity with the linear appeara^nces of things, 
and a faculty of rendering them, may be, 
step by step, acquired. To which advantpg )s 
add these: — that even thus early the pupil 
learns, almost unconsciously, the true theory 
of a picture — namely, that it is a delineation 
of objects as they appear when projected on a 
plane placed between them and the eye ; and 
that when he reaches a fit age for commenc- 
ing scientific perspective he is already thor- 
oughly acquainted with the facts which 
form its logical basis. 

As exhibiting a rational mode of coimnuni- 
cating primai-y conceptions in geometry, we 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 135 

cannot do better than quote the following 
passage from Mr. Wvse : — 

" A child has been in the habit of using cubes for arithme- 
tic; let him use them also for the elements of geometry. I 
would begin with soUds, the reverse of the usual plan. It 
saves all the difficulty of absurd definitions, and bad explana- 
tions o.i points, lines, and surfaces, which are notliing but ab- 
stracUons. ... A cube presents many of the principal 
elements of geometry ; it at -once exliibits points, straight lines, 
parallel lines, angles, parallelograms, etc., etc. These cubes 
are divisible into various parts. The pupil has already been 
familiarized with such divisions in numeration, and he now 
proceeds to a comparison of their several parts, and of the 
relation of these p'l.rts to each other. . . . From thence he 
advances to globes, which fm-nish him with elementary no- 
tions of the circle, of curves generally, etc., etc. 

" Being tolerably familiar with solids, he may now substi- 
tute planes. The transition may be made very easy. Let the 
cube, for instance, be cut into thin divisions, and placed on 
paper: he will then see as many plane rectangles as he has 
divisions: so with all the othei*s. Globes maybe treated in 
the same manner; he will thus see how surfaces really are 
generated, and be enabled to abstract them with facihty in 
every solid. 

"He has thus acquired the alphabet and reading of geom- 
etry. He now proceeds to write it. 

" The simplest operation, and therefore the first, is merely 
to place these planes on a piece of paper, and pass the pencil 
round them. When this has been frequently done, the plane 
may be put at a little distance, and the child required to copy 
it, and so on." 

A stock of geometrical conceptions having 
been obtained, in some such manner as this 
recommended by Mr. Wyse, a further step 
may, in course of time, be taken, by introduc- 
ing the practice of testing the correctness of 
all figures drawn by the eye ; thus alike excit- 
ing an ambition to make them exact, and con- 
tinually illustrating the difficulty of fulfilling 
timt ambition. There can be little doubt that 



136 EDUCATION. 

geometry had its origin (as, indeed, the word 
implies) in the methods discovered by artisans 
and others, of making accurate measurement 
for the foundations of buildings, areas of in- 
closures, and the like ; and that its truths came 
to be treasured up, merely with a view to their 
immediate utility. They should be introduced 
to the pupil under analogous relationships. 
In the cutting out of pieces for his card-houses, 
in the drawing of ornamental diagrams for 
coloring, and in those various instructive oc- 
cupations which an inventive teacher will 
lead him into, he may be for a length of time 
advantageously left, like the primitive builder, 
to tentative processes; and will so gain an 
abundant experience of the difficulty of achiev- 
ing his aims by the unaided senses. When, 
having meanwhile undergone a valuable dis- 
cipline of the perceptions, he has reached a fit 
age for using a pair of compasses, he will, 
whilst duly appreciating these as enabling 
him to verify his ocular guesses, be still hin- 
dered by the difficulties of the approximative 
method. In this stage he may be left for a 
further period : partly as being yet too young 
for anything higher ; partly because it is de- 
sirable that he should be made to feel still 
more strongly the want of systematic contri- 
vances. If the acquisition of knowledge is to 
be made continuously interesting ; and if, in 
the early civilization of the child, as in the 
early civilization of the race, science becomes 
attractive only as ministering to art; it is 
manifest that the proper preliminary to geom- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 137 

etry is a long practice in those constructive 
processes which geometry will facilitate. Ob- 
serve that here, too, nature points the way. 
Almost invariably, children show a strong 
propensity to cut out things in paper, to make, 
to build— a propensity which, if duly encour- 
aged and directed, will not only prepare the 
way for scientific conceptions, but will devel- 
op those powers of manipulation in which 
most people are so deficient. 

When the observing and inventive faculties 
have attained the requisite power, the pupil 
may be introduced to empirical geometry; 
that is— geometry dealing with methodical 
solutions, but not with the demonstrations of 
them. Like all other transitions in education, 
this should be made not formally but incident- 
ally ; and the relationship to constructive art 
should still be maintained. To make a tetra- 
hedron in cardboard, like one given to him, is 
a problem which will alike interest the pupil, 
and serve as a convenient starting-point. In 
attempting this, he finds it needful to draw 
four equilateral triangles arranged in special 
positions. Being unable in the absence of an 
exact method to do this accurately he discov- 
ers on putting the triangles into their respec- 
tive positions, that he cannot make their 
sides fit, and that their angles do not properly 
meet at the apex. He may now be shown how 
by describing a couple of circles, each of these 
triangles may be drawn with perfect correct- 
ness and without guessing ; and after his fail- 
ure he will duly value the information. Hav- 



138 EDUCATION. 

ing thus helped him to the solution of his first 
problem, with the view of illustrating the 
natm*e of geometrical methods, he is in future 
to be left altogether to his own ingenuity in 
solving the questions put to him. To bisect a 
line, to erect a perpendicular, to describe a 
square, to bisect an angle, to draw a line par- 
allel to a given line, to describe a hexagon, 
are problems which a little patience will ona- 
ble him to find out. And from these he may 
be led on step by step to questions of a more 
complex kind; all of which, under judicious 
mancigement, he will puzzle through unhelped. 
Doubtless, many of those brought up under 
the old regime, will look upon tliis assertion 
sceptically. We speak from facts, however, 
and those neither few nor special. We have 
seen a class of boys become so interested in 
making out solutions to these problems, as to 
look forward to their geometry lesson as a 
chief event of the week. Within the last 
month, we have been told of one girls' school, 
in which some of the young ladies voluntarily 
occupy themselves with geometrical questions 
out of school-hours ; and of another, in which' 
they not only do this, but in w^hich one of them 
is begging for problems to find out during the 
holidays— both which facts we state on the 
authority of the teacher. There could indeed 
be no stronger proofs than are thus afforded 
of the practicability and the immense advan- 
tage of self-development. A branch of knowl- 
edge which as commonly taught is dry and 
even repulsive, may, by following the method 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 139 

a 

of nature, be made extremely interesting and 
profoundly beneficial. We say profoundly 
beneficial, because the effects are not confined 
to the gaining of geometrical facts, but often 
revolutionize the whole state of mind. It has 
repeatedly occurred, that those who have been 
stupefied by the ordinary school-drill — by its 
abstract formulas, by its wearisome tasks, by 
its cramming — have suddenly had their intel- 
lects roused, by thus ceasing to make them 
passive recipients, and inducing them to be- 
come active discoverers. The discouragement 
brought about by bad teaching having been 
diminished by a little sympathy, and sufficient 
perseverance induced to achieve a first success, 
there arises a revulsion of feeling affecting the 
whole nature. They no longer find them- 
selves incompetent; they too can do some- 
thing. And gradually as success follows suc- 
cess, the incubus of despair disappears, and 
they attack the difficulties of their other 
studies with a courage that insures conquest. 
This empirical geometry which presents an- 
endless series of problems, and should be con- 
tinued along with other studies for years, may 
throughout be advantageously accompanied 
by those concrete applications of its principles 
which serve as its preliminary. After the 
cube, the octahedron, and the various forms 
of pyramid and prism have been mastered, 
may come the more complex regular bodies— 
the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron— to 
construct which out of single pieces of card- 
board requires considerable ingenuity. From 



140 EDUCATION. 

these, the transition may naturally be made 
to such modified forms of the regular bodies 
as are met with in crystals — the truncated 
cube, the cube with its dihedral as well as its 
solid angles truncated, the octahedron and the 
various prisms as similarly modified ; in imi- 
tating which numerous forms assumed by 
different metals and salts, an acquaintance 
with the leading facts of mineralogy Aviil be 
incidentally gained. After long continuance 
in exercises of this kind, rational geometry, 
as may be supposed, presents no obstacles. 
Constantly habituated to contemplate rela- 
tionships of form and quantity, and vaguely 
perceiving from time to time the necessity of 
certain results as reached by certain means, 
the pupil comes to regard the demonstrations 
of Euclid as the missing supplements to his 
familiar problems. His well-disciplined facul- 
ties enable him easily to master its successive 
propositions, and to appreciate their value; 
and he has the occasional gratification of 
finding some of his own methods proved to be 
true. Thus he enjoys what is to the unpre- 
pared a dreary task. It only remains to add, 
that his mind will presently arrive at a fit 
condition for that most valuable of all exer- 
cises for the reflective faculties— the making 
of original demonstrations. Such theorems 
as those appended to the successive books of 
the Messrs. Chambers' Euclid, will soon be- 
come practicable to him ; and in proving them 
the process of self -development will be not 
intellectual only, but moral. 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 141 

To continue much further these suggestions 
would be to write a detailed treatise on educa- 
tion, which we do not purpose. The forego- 
ing outlines of plans for exercising the percep- 
tions in early childhood for conducting object- 
lessons for teaching drawing and geometry, 
must be considered as roughly -sketched illus- 
trations of the method dictated by the gen- 
eral principles previously specified. We be- 
lieve that on examination they will be found 
not only to progress from the simple to the 
complex, from the concrete to the abstract, 
from the empirical to the rational ; but to sat- 
isfy the further requirements that education 
shall be a repetition of civilization in little, 
that it shall be as much as possible a process 
of self -evolution, and that it shall be pleasura- 
ble. That there should be one type of method 
capable of satisfying all these conditions, tends 
alike to verify the conditions, and to prove 
that type of method the right one. And when 
we add that this method is the logical out- 
come of the tendency, characterizing all mod- 
ern systems of instruction —that it is but an 
adoption in full of the method of nature which 
they adopt partially— that it displays this 
complete adoption of the method of nature, 
not only by conforming to the above princi- 
ples, but by following the suggestions which 
the unfolding mind itself gives, facilitating its 
spontaneous activities, and so aiding the de- 
velopments which nature is busy with— when 
we add this, there seems abundant reason to 
conclude, that the mode of procedure above 



142 EDUCATION. 

exemplified, closely approximates to the true 
one. 

A few paragraphs must be appended in fur- 
ther inculcation of the two general principles, 
alike the most important and the least at- 
tended to : we mean the principle that through- 
out youth, as in early childhood and in matu- 
rity, the process shpJl be one of self-instruc- 
tion ; and the obverse principle, that the men- 
tal action induced by this process shall be 
throughout intrinsically grateful. If progres- 
sion from simple to complex, and from con- 
crete to abstract, be considered the essential 
requirements as dictated by abstract psychol- 
ogy, then do these requirements that knowl- 
edge shall be self -mastered, and pleasurably 
mastered, become the tests by which we may 
judge whether the dictates of abstract psy- 
chology are being fulfilled. If the first em- 
body the leading generalizations of the science 
of mental growth, the last are the chief can- 
ons of the art of fostering mental growth. 
For manifestly if the steps in our curriculum 
are so arranged that they can be successively 
ascended by the pupil himself with little or no 
help, they must correspond with the stages of 
evolution in his faculties; and manifestly if 
the successive achievements of these steps are 
intrinsically gratifying to him, it follows that 
they require no more than a normal exercise 
of his powers. 

But the making education a process of self- 
evolution has other advantages than this of 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 143 

keeping our lessons in the right order. In the 
first place, it guarantees a vividness and per- 
manency of impression which the usual meth- 
ods can never produce. Any piece of knowl- 
edge which the pupil has himself acquired, 
any problem which he has himself solved, be- 
comes by virtue of the conquest much more 
thoroughly his than it could else be. Tiie 
preliminary activity of mind which his suc- 
cess implies, the concentration of thought nec- 
essary to it, and the excitement consequent 
on his triumph, conspire to register all the 
facts in his memory in a way that no mere 
information heard from a teacher, or read in 
a school-book, can be registered. Even if he 
fails, the tension to which his faculties have 
been wound up insures his remembrance of 
the solution when given to him, better than 
half a dozen repetitions would. Observe again , 
that this discipline necessitates a continuous 
organization of the knowledge he acquires. 
It is in the very nature of facts and infer- 
ences, assimilated in this normal manner, 
that they successively become the premises 
of further conclusions, — the means of solving 
still further questions. The solution of yes- 
terday's problem helps the pupil in mastering 
to-day's. Thus the knowledge is turned into 
faculty as soon as it is taken in, and forth- 
with aids in the general function of thinking 
— does not lie merely written m the pages of 
an internal library, as when rote-leamt. 
Mark further, the importance of the moral 
culture which this constant self-help involves. 



144 EDUCATION. 

Courage in attacking difficulties, patient con- 
centration of the attention, perseverance 
through failures— these are characteristics 
which after-life specially requires ; and these 
are characteristics which this system of mak- 
ing the mind work for its food specially pro- 
duces. That it is thoroughly practicable to 
carry out instruction after this fashion we 
can ourselves testify ; having been in youth 
thus led to successively solve the compara- 
tively complex problems of Perspective. And 
that leading teachers have been gradually 
tending in this direction is indicated alike in 
the saying of Fellenberg, that "the individ- 
ual, independent activity of the pupil is of 
much greater importance than the ordinary 
busy officiousness of many who assume the 
office of educators; " in the opinion of Horace 
Mann, that ' ' unfortunately education amongst 
us at present consists too much in telling, not 
in training; " and in the remark of M. Marcel 
that "what the learner discovers by mental 
exertion is better known than what is told to 
him." 

Similarly with the correlative requirement, 
that the method of culture pursued shall be 
one productive of an intrinsically happy ac- 
tivity, — an activity not happy in virtue of ex- 
trinsic rewards to be obtained, but in virtue 
of its own healthfulness. Conformity to this 
requirement not only guards us against 
thwarting the normal process of evolution, but 
incidentally secures positive benefits of im- 
portance. Unless we are to return to an as- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 145 

cetic morality, the maintenance of youthful 
happiness must be considered as in itself a 
worthy aim. Not to dwell upon this, how- 
ever, we go on to remark that a pleasurable 
state of feeling is far more favorable to intel- 
lectual action than one of indifference or dis- 
gust. Every one knows that things read, 
heard, or seen with interest, are better remem- 
bered than those read, heard, or seen v/ith 
apathy. In the one case the faculties ap- 
pealed to are actively occupied with the sub- 
ject presented; in the other they are inac- 
tively occupied with it ; and the attention is 
continually drawn away after more attractive 
thoughts. Hence the impressions are respec- 
tively strong and weak. Moreover, the intel- 
lectual listlessness which a pupil's lack of in- 
terest in any study involves, is further com- 
plicated by his anxiety, by his fear of conse- 
quences, which distract his attention, and in- 
crease the difficulty he finds in bringing his 
faculties to bear upon these facts that are re- 
pugnant to them. Clearly, therefore, the ef- 
ficiency of any intellectual action will, other 
things equal, be proportionate to the gratifi- 
cation with which it is performed. 

It should be considered also, that important 
moral consequences depend upon the habitual 
pleasure or pain wliich daily lessons produce. 
No one can compare the faces and manners of 
two boys— the one made happy by mastering 
interesting" subjects, and the other made mis- 
erable by disgust with his studies, by conse- 
quent failure, by cold looks, by threats, by 



UQ EDUCATION. 

punishment— without seeing that the disposi- 
tion of the one is being benefited, and that of 
the other greatly injured. Whoever has 
marked the effect of intellectual success upon 
the mind, and the power of the mind over the 
body, will see that in the one case both tem- 
per and health are favorably affected ; whilst 
in the other there is danger of permanent 
moroseness, of permanent timidity, and even 
of permanent constitutional depression. To 
all which considerations we must add the fur- 
ther one, that the relationship between teach- 
ers and their pupils is, other things equal, 
rendered friendly and influential, or antago- 
nistic and powerless, according as the system 
of culture produces happiness or misery. Hu- 
man beings are at the mercy of their associ- 
ated ideas. A daily minister of pain cannot 
fail to be regarded with a secret dislike, and 
if he causes no emotions but painful ones, v/ill 
inevitably be hated. Conversely, he who con- 
stantly aids children to their ends, hourly pi*o- 
vides them with the satisfactions of conquest, 
hourly encourages them through their difficul- 
ties and sympathizes in their successes, can- 
not fail to be liked; nay, if his behavior is 
consistent throughout, must be loved. And 
when we remember how efficient and benign 
is the control of a master who is felt to be a 
friend, when compared with the control of one 
who is looked upon with aversion, or at best 
indifference, we may infer that the indirect ad- 
vantages of conducting education on the hap- 
piness principle do not fall far short of the di- 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 147 

rect ones. To all who question the possibility 
of acting out the system here advocated, we 
reply as before, that not only does theory point 
to it, but experience commends it. To the 
many verdicts of distinguished teachers who 
since Pestalozzi's time have testified this, may 
be here added that of Professor Pillans, who 
asserts that " where young people are taught 
as they ought to be, they are quite as happy 
in school as at play, seldom less delighted, 
nay, often more, with the well-directed exer- 
cise of their mental energies, than with that 
of their muscular powers." 

As suggesting a final reason for making ed- 
ucation a process of self -instruction, and by 
consequence a process of pleasurable instruc- 
tion, we may advert to the fact that, in pro- 
portion as it is made so, is there a probability 
that education will not cease when school- 
days end. As long as the acquisition of 
knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, 
so long will there be a prevaihng tendency to 
discontinue it when free from the coercion of 
parents and masters. And when the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge has been rendered habitu- 
ally gratifying, then will there be as prevail- 
ing a tendency to continue, without superin- 
tendence, that same self-culture previously 
carried on under superintendence. These re- 
sults are inevitable. While the laws of men- 
tal association remain true — while men dis- 
like the things and places that suggest pain- 
ful recollections, and delight in those which 
call to mind bygone pleasures — painful les- 



148 EDUCATION. 

sons will make knowledge repulsive, and 
pleasurable lessons will make it attractive. 
The men to whom in boyhood information 
came in dreary tasks along with threats of 
punishment, and who were never led into 
habits of independent inquiry, are unlikely 
to be students in after years ; while those to 
whom it came in the natural forms, at the 
proper times, and who remember its facts as 
not only interesting in tliemselves, but as the 
occasions of a long series of gratifying suc- 
cesses, are likely to continue through life that 
self-instruction commenced in youth. 



CHAPTER III. 

MORAL EDUCATION. 

Strangely enough, the most glaring defect 
in our programmes of education is entirely 
overlooked. While much is being done in 
the detailed improvement of our systems in 
respect both of matter and manner, the most 
pressing desideratum has not yet been even 
recognized as a desideratum. To prepare the 
young for the duties of life is tacitly admitted 
by all to be the end which parents and school- 
masters should have in view; and happily 
the value of the things taught, and the good- 
ness of the method followed in teaching them, 
are now ostensibly jugded by their fitness to 
this end. The propriety of substituting for 
an exclusively classical training a training in 
which the modern languages shall have a 
share, is argued on this ground. The neces- 
sity of increasing the amount of science is 
urged for like reasons. But though some 
care is taken to fit youth of both sexes for so- 
ciety and citizenship, no care whatever is 
taken to fit them for the still more important 
position they will ultimately have to fill — the 
position of parents. While it is seen that for 
the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elabo- 
rate preparation is needed, it appears to be 
thought that for the bringing up of children, 



150 EDUCATION. 

no preparation whatever is needed. While 
many years are spent by a boy in gaining 
knowledge, of which the chief value is that it 
constitutes "the education of a gentleman;" 
and while many years are spent by a girl in 
those decorative acquirements which fit her 
for evening parties ; not an hour is spent by 
either of them in preparation for that gravest 
of all responsibilities — the management of a 
family. Is it that this responsibility is but a 
remote contingency? On the contrary, it is 
certain to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it 
that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly 
not : of all functions which the adult has to 
fulfil this is the most difficult. Is it that each 
may be trusted by self -instruction to fit liim- 
self, or herself, for the office of parent? No: 
not only is the need for such self -instruction 
unrecognized, but the complexity of the sub- 
ject renders it the one of all others in which 
self -instruction is least likely to succeed. No 
rational plea can be put forward for leaving 
the Art of Education out of our curriculimi. 
Whether as bearing upon the happiness of 
parents themselves, or whether as affecting 
the characters and lives of their children and 
remote descendants, we must admit that a 
knowledge of the right methods of juvenile 
culture, physical, intellectual, and moral, is a 
knowledge second to none in importance. 
This topic should occupy the highest and last 
place in the course of instruction passed 
through by each man and woman. As phys- 
ical maturity is marked by the ability to 



MORAL EDUCATION 151 

produce offspring, so mental maturity is 
marked by the ability to train those off- 
spring. The subject which involves all other 
subjects, and therefore the subject in ivhich the 
education of every one should culminate, is 
the Theory and Practice of Education, 

In the absence of this preparation, the 
management of children, and more especially 
the moral management, is lamentably bad. 
Parents either never think about the matter 
at all, or else their conclusions are crude and 
inconsistent. In most cases, and especially 
on the part of mothers, the treatment adopted 
on every occasion is that which the impulse 
of the moment prompts : it springs not from 
any reasoned-out conviction as to what will 
most conduce to the child's welfare, but 
merely expresses the passing parental feel- 
ings, whether good or ill; and varies from 
hour to hour as these feelings vary. Or if 
these blind dictates of passion are supple- 
mented by any definite doctrines and meth- 
ods, they are those that have been handed 
down from the past, or those suggested by 
the remembrances of childhood, or those 
adopted from nurses and. servants— methods 
devised not by the enhghtenment, but by the 
ignorance of the time. Commenting on the 
chaotic state of opinion and practice relative 
to family government, Richter writes:— 

" If the secret variances of a large class of ordinary fathers 
were brought to light, and laid doAvn as a plan of studies, and 
reading catalogued for a moral education, they would run 
somewhat after this fashion:— In the first hour ' pure morahty 
must be read to the chUd, either by myself or the tutor; ' in 



152 EDUCATION. 

the second, ' mixed morality, or that which may be applied 
to one's own advantage;" in the third, 'do you not see that 
your father does so and so? ' in the foiu-th, '' you are Utfele, and 
this is only fit for grown-up people ;' in the flftli, ' the chief 
matter is that you should succeed in the world, and become 
sometliing in the state; ' in tlie sixth, ' not the temporary, but 
the eternal, determines the worth of a man ; ' in the seventh, 
' therefore rather suffer injustice, and be kind; ' in the eighth, 
' but defend yourself bravely if any one attack you;' in the 
ninth, ' do not make a noise, dear child; ' in the tenth, ' a boy 
must not sit so quiet; ' in the eleventh, 'you must obey your 
parents better; ' in the twelfth, 'and educate yourself.' So 
by the hourly change of his principles, the father conceals 
their untenableness and onesidedness. As for his wife, she is 
iK'ither like him, nor yet hke that harlequin who came on to 
the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm, and 
answered to the mquiry, what he had under his right arm, 
' orders,' and to what ho had under his left arm, ' counter- 
orders.' But the mother might be much better compared to 
a giant Briareus, who had a himdred arms, and a bimdle of 
papers under each." 

This state of things is not to be readily- 
changed. Generations must pass before any 
great amehoration of it can be expected. 
Like political constitutions, educational sys- 
tems are not made, but grow; and within 
brief periods growth is insensible. Slow, 
however, as must be any improvement, even 
that improvement implies the use of means ; 
and among the means is discussion. 

' We are not among those who believe in 
Lord Palmerston's dogma, that "all children 
are born good." On the whole, the opposite 
dogma, untenable as it is, seems to us less 
wide of the truth. Nor do we agree with 
those who think that, by skilful discipline, 
children may be made altogether what they 
should be. Contrariwise, we are satisfied 



MORAL EDUCATION, 153 

that though imperfections of nature may be 
diminished by wise management, they can- 
not be removed by it. The notion that an 
ideal humanity might be forthwith produced 
by a perfect system of education, is near akin 
to that shadowed forth in the poems of Shel- 
ley, that would mankind give up their old in- 
stitutions, prejudices, and errors, all the evils 
in the world would at once disappear : neither 
notion being acceptable to such as have dis- 
passionately studied human affairs. 

Not that we are without sympathy with 
those who entertain these too sanguine hopes. 
Enthusiasm, pushed even to fanaticism, is a 
useful motive-power — perhaps an indispens- 
able one. It is clear that the ardent politi- 
cian would never undergo the labors and 
make the sacrifices he does; did he not believe 
that the reform he fights for is the one thing 
needful. But for his conviction that drunk- 
enness is the root of almost all social evils, 
the teetotaller would agitate far less energeti- 
cally. In philanthropy as in other things 
great advantage results from division of 
labor; and that there may be division of 
labor, each class of philanthropists must be 
more or less subordinated to its function — 
must have an exaggerated faith in its work. 
Hence, of those who regard education, intel- 
lectual or moral, as the panacea, their undue 
expectations are not without use; and that 
perhaps it is part of the beneficent order of 
things that their confidence cannot be shaken. 

Even were it true, however, that by some 



154 EDUCATION. 

possible system of moral government children 
could be moulded into the desired form ; and 
even could every parent be duly indoctrinated 
with this system ; we should still be far from 
achieving t^ie object in view. It is forgotten 
that the carrying out of any such system, 
presupposes, on the part of adults, a degree of 
intelligence, of goodness, of self-control, pos- 
sessed by no one. The great error made by 
those who discuss questions of juvenile disci- 
pline, is in ascribing all the faults and diffi- 
culties to the children, and none to the par- 
ents. The current assumption respecting 
family government, as respecting national 
government, is, that the virtues are with the 
rulers and the vices with the ruled. Judging 
by educational theories, men and women are 
entirely transfigured in the domestic relation. 
The citizens we do business with, the people 
we meet in the world, we all know to be very 
imperfect creatures. In the daily scandals, 
in the quarrels of friends, in bankruptcy dis- 
closures, in lawsuits, in police reports, we 
have constantly thrust before us the pervad- 
ing selfishness, dishonesty, brutality. Yet 
when we criticise nursery management, and 
canvass the misbehavior of juveniles, we 
habitually take for granted that these culpa- 
ble men and women are free from moral de- 
linquency in the treatment of their offspring ! 
So far is this from the truth, that we do not 
hesitate to say that to parental misconduct is 
traceable a great part of the domestic disorder 
commonly ascribed to the perversity of chil- 



MORAL EDUCATION. 155 

dren. We do not assert this of the more sym- 
pathetic and self -restrained, among whom we 
hope most of our readers may be classed, but 
we assert it of the mass. What kind of moral 
discipline is to be expected from a mother 
who, time after time, angrily shakes her in- 
fant because it will not suckle her, which we 
once saw a mother do? How much love of 
justice and generosity is likely to be instilled 
by a father who, on having his attention 
drawn by his child's scream to the fact that 
its finger is jammed between the window sash 
and the sill, forthwith begins to beat the child 
instead of releasing it? Yet that there are 
such fathers is testified to us by an eye-wit- 
ness. Or, to take a still stronger case, also 
vouched for by direct testimony — what are 
the educational prospects of the boy who, on 
being taken home with a dislocated thigh, is 
saluted with a castigation? It is true that 
these are extreme instances — instances exhib- 
iting in human beings that blind instinct 
which impels brutes to destroy the weakly 
and injured of their own race. But extreme 
though they are, they typify feelings and 
conduct daily observable in many families. 
Who has not repeatedly seen a child slapped 
by nurse or parent for a fretfulness probably 
resulting from bodily derangement? Who, 
when watching a mother snatch up a fallen 
little one, has not often traced, both in the 
rough manner and in the sharply-uttered ex- 
clamation— " You stupid little thing!"— an 
irascibility foretelling endless future squab- 



156 EDUCATION. 

bles? Is there not in the harsh tones in which 
a father bids his children be quiet, evidence 
of a deficient fellow-feehng with them? Are 
not the constant, and often quite needless, 
thwartings that the young experience — the 
injunctions to sit still, which an active child 
cannot obey without suffering great nervous 
irritation, the commands not to look out of 
the window when travelling by railway, 
which on a child of any intelligence entails 
serious deprivation — are not these thwart- 
ings, we ask, signs of a terrible lack of sym- 
pathy? The truth is, that the difficulties of 
moral education are necessarily of dual origin 
— necessarily result from the combined faults 
of parents and children. If hereditary trans- 
mission is a law of nature, as every naturalist 
knows it to be, and as our daily remarks and 
current proverbs admit it to be ; then on the 
average of cases, the defects of children mir- 
ror the defects of their parents ; — on the aver- 
age of cases, we say, because, complicated as 
the results are by the transmitted traits of re- 
moter ancestors, the correspondence is not 
special but only general. And if, on the av- 
erage of cases, this inheritance of defects 
exists, then the evil passions which parents 
have to check in their children imply like 
evil passions in themselves; hidden, it may 
be, from the public eye ; or perhaps obscured 
by other feelings ; but still there. Evidently, 
therefore, the general practice of any ideal 
system of discipline is hopeless : parents are 
not good enough. 



MOBAL EDUCATION. 157 

Moreover, even were there methods by 
which the desired end could be at once ef- 
fected, and even had fathers and mothers 
suflEicient insight, sympathy, and self-com- 
mand to employ these methods consistently, 
it might still be contended that it would be of 
no use to reform family discipline faster than 
other things are reformed. What is it that 
we aim to do? Is it not that education of 
whatever kind has for its proximate end to 
prepare a child for the business of life— to 
produce a citizen who, at the same time that 
he is well conducted, is also able to make his 
way in the world? And does not making his 
way in the world (by which we mean, not 
the acquirement of wealth, but of the means 
requisite for properly bringing up a family) 
— does not this imply a certain fitness for the 
world as it now is? And if by any system of 
culture an ideal human being could be pro- 
duced, is it not doubtful whether he would be 
fit for the world as it now is? May we not, 
on the contrary, suspect that his too keen 
sense of rectitude, and too elevated standard 
of conduct, would make life alike intolerable 
and impossible? And however admirable the 
results might be, considered individually, 
would it not be self-defeating in so far as soci- 
ety and posterity are concerned? It may, we 
think, be argued with much reason, that as in 
a nation so in a family, the kind of govern- 
ment is, on the whole, about as good as the 
general state of human nature permits it to 
be. It may be said that in the one case, as in 



158 EDUCATION, 

the otherf the average character of the people 
determines the qiiaUty of the control exer- 
cised. It may be inferred that in both cases 
amelioration of the average character leads 
to an amelioration of system; and further, 
that were it possible to ameliorate the sys- 
tem without the average character being 
first ameliorated, evil, rather than good, 
would follow. It may be urged that such 
degree of harshness as children now ex- 
perience from their parents and teachers, 
is but a preparation for that greater harsh- 
ness which they will meet with on entering 
the world ; and that wei'e it possible for par- 
ents and teachers to behave towards them 
with perfect equity and entire sympathy, 
it would but intensify the sufferings which 
the selfishness of men must, in after life, 
inflict on them.* 



* This is. the plea put in by some for the rough treatment 
experienced by boys at our public schools; where, as it is said, 
they are introduced to a miniature world whose imperfections 
and hardships prepare them for those of the real world; and 
it must be admitted that the plea has some force. But it is a 
very insufficient plea. For whereas domestic and school dis- 
cipline, though they should not be very much better than the 
disciplme of adult life, should at any rate be somewhat better; 
the discipline which boys meet with at Eton, Winchester, 
Harrow, etc., is much Avorse than that of adult life— much 
more unjust, cruel, brutal. Instead of being an aid to hu- 
man progress, wliich all culture should be, the culture of our 
public schools, by accustoming boys to a despotic form of 
government and an intercourse regulated by brute force, 
tends to fit them for a lower state of society than that which 
exists. And chiefly recruited as our legislature is from among 
those who are brought up at these schools, this bai'barizing iu- 
fluence becomes a serious hindrance to national progress. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 159 

"But does not this prove too much?" some 
one will ask. " If no system of moral culture 
can forthwith' make children altogether what 
they should be ; if, even were there a system 
that would do this, existing parents are too 
imperfect to carry it out ; and if even could 
such a system be successfully carried out, its 
results would be disastrously incongruous 
with the present state of society ; does it net 
follow that a refoiTii in the system now in 
use is neither practicable nor desirable?" 
No. It merely follows that reform in domes- 
tic government must go on, pari passu with 
other reforms. It merely follows that meth- 
ods of discipline neither can be nor should 
be ameliorated, except by instahnents. It 
merely follows that the dictates of abstract 
rectitude wiU, in practice, inevitably be sub- 
ordinated by the present state of human na- 
ture — by the imperfections alike of children, 
of parents, and of society; and can only be 
better fulfilled as the general character b^ 
comes better. 

"At any rate, then," may rejoin our critic, 
"it is clearly useless ta set up any ideal 
standard of family discipline. There can be 
no advantage in elaborating aiid recommend- 
ing methods that are in advance of the time." 
Again we must contend for the contrary. 
Just as in the case of political government, 
though pure rectitude may be at present im- 
practicable, it is requisite to know where the , 
right lies, so that the changes we make may 
be towards the right instead of aivay from 



160 EDUCATION. 

it; so in the case of domestic government, 
an ideal must be upheld, that there may be 
gradual approximations to it. We need fear 
no evil consequences from the maintenance 
of such an ideal. On the average the consti- 
tutional conservatism of mankind is always 
strong enough to prevent a too rapid change. 
So admirable are the arrangements of things 
that until men have grown up to the level of 
a higher belief, they cannot receive it : nomi- 
nally, they may hold it, but not virtually. 
And even when the truth gets recognized, 
the obstacles to conformity with it are so per- 
sistent as to outlive the patience of philanthro- 
pists and even philosophers. We may be 
quite sure, therefore, that the many difficul- 
ties standing in the way of a normal govern- 
ment of children, will always put an adequate 
check upon the efforts to realize it. 

With these preliminary explanations, let us 
go on to consider the true aims and methods 
of moral education— moral education, strictly 
so called, we mean; for we do not propose to 
enter upon the question of religious education 
as an aid to the education exclusively moral. 
This we omit as a topic better dealt with 
separately. After a few pages devoted to the 
settlement of general principles, during the 
perusal of which we bespeak the reader's 
I)atience, we shall aim by illustrations to 
make clear the right methods of parental be- 
havior in the hourly occurring difficulties of 
family government. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 161 

When a child falls, or runs its head against 
the table, it suffers a pain, the remembrance 
of which tends to make it more careful 
for the future; and by an occasional rep- 
etition of like experiences, it is eventually 
disciplined into a proper guidance of its 
movements. If it lays hold of the fire-bars, 
thrusts its finger into the candle-flame, or 
spUls boiling water on any part of its skin, 
the resulting burn or scald is a lesson not 
easily forgotten. So deep an impi-ession is 
produced by one or two such events, that 
afterwards no persuasion will induce it again 
to disregard the laws of its constitution in 
these ways. 

Now in these and like cases. Nature illus- 
trates to us in the simplest way, the true 
theory and practice of moral discipline — a 
theory and practice which, however much 
they may seem to the superficial like thoso 
commonly received, we shall find on exami- 
nation to differ from them very widely. 

Observe, in the first place, that in bodily 
injuries and their penalties we have miscon- 
duct and its consequences reduced to their 
simplest forms. Though, according to their 
popular acceptations, right and wrong are 
words scarcely applicable to actions that 
have none but direct bodily effects ; yet who- 
ever considers the matter will see that such 
actions must be as much classifiable under 
these heads as any other actions. From 
whatever basis they start, all theories of mor- 
11 



162 EDUCATION. 

ality agree in considering that conduct whose 
total results, immediate and remote, are ben- 
eficial, is good conduct ; while conduct whose 
total results, immediate and remote, are in- 
jurious, is bad conduct. The happiness or 
misery caused by it are the ultimate standards 
by which all men judge of behavior. We 
consider drunkenness wrong because of the 
physical degeneracy and accompanying moral 
evils entailed on the transgressor and liis de- 
pendents. Did theft uniformly give pleasure 
both to taker and loser, we should not find it 
in our catalogue of sins. Were it conceiva- 
ble that benevolent actions multiplied human 
pains, we should condemn them — should not 
consider them benevolent. It needs but to 
read the first newspaper leader, or listen to 
any conversation touching social affairs, to 
see that acts of parliament, political move- 
ments, philanthropic agitations, in common 
with the doings of individuals, are judged by 
their anticipated results in multiplying the 
pleasures or pains of men. And if on looking 
on all secondary superinduced ideas, we find 
these to be our ultunate tests of right and 
wrong, we cannot refuse to class purely phys- 
ical actions as right or wrong according to 
the beneficial or detrimental results they pro- 
duce. 

Note, in the second place, the character of 
the punishments by which these physical 
transgressions are prevented. Punishments, 
we call them, in the absence of a better word ; 



MORAL EDUCATION, 163 

for they are not punishments in the literal 
sense. They are not artificial and unneces- 
sary inflictions of pain; but are simply the 
beneficent checks to actions that are essen- 
tially at variance with bodily welfare— checks 
in the absence of which life would quickly be 
destroyed by bodily injuries. It is the pecul- 
iarity of these penalties, if we must so call 
them, that they are nothing more than the 
unavoidable consequences of the deeds which 
they follow : they are nothing more than the 
inevitable reactions entailed by the child's 
actions. 

Let it be further borne in mind that these 
painful reactions are proportionate to the de- 
gree in which the organic laws have been 
transgressed. A slight accident brings a 
slight pain, a more serious one, a greater 
pain. When a child tumbles over the door- 
step, it is not ordained that it shall suffer in 
excess of the amount necessary, with the 
view of making it still more cautious than 
the necessary suffering will make it. But 
from its daily experience it is left to learn the 
greater or less penalties of greater or less er- 
rors ; and to behave accordingly. 

And then mark, lastly, that these nMural 
reactions which follow the child's wrong ac- 
tions, are constant, direct, unhesitating, and 
not to be escaped. No threats : but a silent, 
rigorous performance. If a child runs a pin 
into its finger, pain follows. If it does it 
again, there is again the same result : and so 



164 EDUCATION. 

on perpetually. In all its dealings with sur- 
rounding inorganic nature it finds this un- 
swerving persistence, which listens to no ex- 
cuse, and from which there is no appeal ; and 
very soon recognizing this stern though be- 
neficent discipline, it becomes extremely care- 
ful not to transgress. 

Still more significant will these general 
truths appear, when we remember that they 
hold throughout adult life as well as through- 
out infantine life. It is by an experimentally- 
gained knowledge of the natural consequences, 
that men and women are checked when they 
go wrong. After home education has ceased, 
and when there are no longer parents and 
teachers to forbid this or that kind of con- 
duct, there comes into play a discipline like 
that by which the young child is taught its 
first lessons in self -guidance. If the youth 
entering upon the business of life idles away 
his time and fulfils slowly or unskilfully the 
duties entrusted to him, there by and by fol- 
lows the natural penalty: he is discharged, 
and left to suffer for awhile the evils of rela- 
tive poverty. On the unpunctual man, failing 
alike his appointments of business and pleas- 
ure, there continually fall the consequent in- 
conveniences, losses, and deprivations. The 
avaricious tradesman who charges too high a 
rate of profit, loses his customers, and so is 
checked in his greediness. Diminishing prac- 
tice teaches the inattentive doctor to bestow 
more trouble on his patients. The too credu- 
lous creditor and the over-sanguine specul^' 



MORAL EDUCATION. 165 

tor alike learn by the difficulties which rash- 
ness entails on them, the necessity of beii^g 
more cautious in their engagements. And 
so throughout the life of every citizen. In 
the quotation so often made apropos of these 
cases—" The burnt child dreads the fire "—we 
see not only that the analogy between this 
social discipline and Nature's early discipline 
of infants is universally recognized; but we 
also see an implied conviction that this disci- 
pline is of the most efficient kind. Nay more, 
this conviction is not only implied, but dis- 
tinctly stated. Every one has heard others 
confess that only by "dearly bought experi- 
ence " had they been induced to give up some 
bad or foolish course of conduct formerly 
pursued. Every one has heard, in the criti- 
cisms passed on the doings of this spendthrift 
or the other speculator, the remark that ad- 
vice was useless, and that nothing but " bitter 
experience " would produce any effect : noth- 
ing, that is, but suffering the unavoidable 
colleequeiaces. And if further proof be needed 
that the penalty of the natural reaction is not 
only the most efficient, but that no humanly- 
devised penalty can replace it, we have such 
further proof in the notorious ill-success of 
our various penal systems. Out of the many 
methods of criminal discipline that have been 
proposed and legally enforced, none have an- 
swered the expectations of their advocates. 
Not only have artificial punishments failed 
to produce reformation, but they have in 
many cases increased the criminality. The 



166 EDUCATION. 

only successful reformatories are those pri- 
vately-established ones which have approxi- 
mated their regime to the method of Nature 
— which have done little more than adminis- 
ter the natural consequences of criminal con- 
duct : the natural consequences being, that by 
imprisonment or other restraint, the criminal 
shall have his liberty of action diminished as 
much as is needful for the safety of society ; 
and that he shall be made to maintain him- 
self while living under this restraint. Thus 
we see not only that the discipline by which 
the young child is so successfully taught to 
regulate its movements is also the discipline 
by which the great mass of adults are kept in 
order, and more or less improved; but that 
the discipline humanly-devised for the worst 
adults, fails when it diverges from this di- 
vinely-ordained discipline, and begins to suc- 
ceed when it approximates to it. 

Have we not here, then, the guiding prin- 
ciple of moral education? Must we not infer 
that the system so beneficent in its effects, 
alike during infancy and maturity, will be 
equally beneficent thoughout youth ? Can 
any one believe that the method which an- 
swers so well in the first and the last divisions 
of life will not answer in the intermediptte di- 
vision? Is it not manifest that as "minis- 
ters and interpreters of Nature" it is the 
function of parents to see that their children 
habitually experience the true consequences 
of their conduct — the natural reactions : 



MOBAL I;t)U CATION. 167 

neither warding them off, nor intensifying 
them, nor putting artificial consequences in 
place of them? No unprejudiced reader will 
hesitate in his assent. 

Probably, however, not a few will contend 
that already most parents do this— that the 
punishments they inflict are, in the majority 
of cases, the true consequences of ill-conduct 
—that parental anger, venting itself in harsh 
words and deeds, is the result of a cMd's 
transgression— and that, in the suffering, 
physical or moral, which the child is subject 
to, it experiences the natural reaction of its 
misbehavior. Along with much error this 
assertion, doubtless, contains some truth. It 
is unquestionable that the displeasure of 
fathers and mothers is a true consequence of 
juvenile delinquency ; and that the manifes- 
tation of it is a normal check upon such de- 
linquency. It is unquestionable that the 
scoldings, and threats, and blows, which a 
passionate parent visits on offending little 
ones, are effects actually produced in such a 
parent by their offences; and so are, in some 
sort, to be considered as among the natm?al 
reactions of their wrong actions. And we 
are by no means prepared to say that these 
modes of treatment are not relatively right- 
right, that is in relation to the uncontrollable 
children of ill-controlled adults: and right in 
relation to a state of society in which such ill- 
controlled adults make up the mass of the 
people- As already suggested, educational 
systems, like poHtical and other institutions, 



168 EDUCATION, 

are generally as good as the state of human 
nature permits. The barbarous children of 
barbarous parents are probably only to be re- 
strained by the barbarous methods which such 
parents spontaneously employ ; wliile submis- 
sion to these barbarous methods is perhaps the 
best preparation such children can have for 
the barbarous society in which they are pres- 
ently to]play a part. Conversely, the civilized 
members of a civilized society will spontane- 
ously manifest their displeasure in less vio- 
lent ways — will spontaneously use milder 
measures: measures strong enough for their 
better-natured children. Thus it is doubtless 
true that, in so far as the expression of parent- 
al feeling is concerned, the principle of the 
natural reaction is always more or less fol- 
lowed. The system of do*nestic government 
ever gravitates towards its right form. 

But now observe two important facts. In 
the first place, observe that, in states of rapid 
transition Hke ours, which witness a long- 
drawn battle between old and new theories 
and old and new practices, the educational 
methods in use are apt to be considerably out 
of harmony with the times. In deference to 
dogmas fit only for the ages that uttered 
them, many parents inflict punishments that 
do violence to their own feelings, and so visit 
on their children ttnnatural reactions; while 
other parents, enthusiastic in their hopes of 
unmediate perfection, rush to the opposite 
extreme. And then observe, in the second 
place, that the discipline on which we ai'e in- 



MOBAL EDUCATION. 109 

sistingis not so much the experience of pa- 
rental approbation, or disapprobation, which, 
in most cases, is only a secondary conse- 
quence of a child's conduct ; but it is the expe- 
rience of those results which would naturally 
flow from the conduct in the absence of pa- 
rental opinion or interference. The truly in- 
structive and salutary consequences are not 
those inflicted by parents when they take 
upon themselves to be Nature's proxies ; but 
they are those inflicted by Nature herself. 
We win endeavor to make this distinction 
clear by a few illustrations, which, while they 
show what we mean by natural reactions as 
contrasted with artificial ones, will afford 
some directly practical suggestions. 

In every family where there are young 
children there almost daily occur cases of 
what mothers and servants call "making a 
litrter." A child has had out its box of toys, 
and leaves them scattered about the floor. 
Or a handful of flowers, brought in from a 
morning walk, is presently seen dispersed 
over tables and chairs. Or a little girl, mak- 
ing doll's-clothes, ■ disfigures the room with 
shreds. In most cases the trouble of rectify- 
ing this disorder falls anywhere but in the 
right place: if in the nursery, the nurse her- 
self, with many grumblings about " tiresome 
little things," etc., undertakes the task; if 
below stairs, the task usually devolves either 
on one of the elder children or on the house- 
maid; the transgressor being visited with 
nothing more than a scolding. In this very 



170 .EDUCATION. 

simple case, however, there are many parents 
wise enough to follow out, more or less con- 
sistently, the normal course — that of making 
the child itself collect the toys or shreds. 
The labor of putting things in order is the 
true consequence of having put them in dis- 
order. Every trader in his office, every wife 
in her household, has daily experience of this 
fact. And if education be a preparation for 
the business of life, then every child should 
also, from the beginning, have daily experi- 
ence of this fact. If the natural penalty be 
met by any refractory behavior (which it 
may perhaps be where the general system of 
moral discipline previously pursued has been 
l)ad), then the proper course is to let the child 
feel the ulterior reaction consequent on its 
disobedience. Having refused or neglected 
to pick up and put away the things it has 
scattered about, and having thereby entaited 
the trouble of doing this on some one else, the 
child should, on subsequent occasions, be de- 
nied the means of giving this trouble. When 
next it petitions for its toy -box, the reply of 
its mamma should be — "The last time you 
had your toys you left them lying on the 
floor, and Jane had to pick them up. Jane 
is too busy to pick up every day the things 
you leave about ; and I cannot do it myself. 
So that, as you will not put away your toys 
when you have done with them, I cannot let 
you have them." This is obviously a natural 
consequence, neither increased nor lessened; 
and must be so recognized by a child. The 



MORAL EDI CATION. 171 

penalty comes, too, at the moment when it is 
most keenly felt. A new-born desire is balked 
at the moment of anticipated gratification ; 
and the strong impression so produced can 
scarcely fail to have an effect on the future 
conduct; an effect which, by consistent repe- 
tition, will do whatever can be done in curing 
the fault. Add to which, that, by this meth- 
od, a child is early taught the lesson which 
cannot be learnt too soon, that in this world 
of ours pleasures are rightly to be obtained 
only by labor. 

Take another case. Not long since we had 
frequently to listen to the reprimands visited 
on a little girl who was scarcely ever ready 
in time for the daily walk. Of eager disposi- 
tion, and apt to become thoroughly absorbed 
in the occupation of the moment, Constance 
never thought of putting on her things until 
the rest were ready. The governess and the 
other children had almost invariably to wait ; 
and from the manmia there almost invaria- 
bly came the same scolding. Utterly as this 
system failed it never occurred to the mam- 
ma to let Constance experience the natural 
penalty. Nor, indeed, would she try it when 
it was suggested to her. In the world the 
penalty of being behind time is the loss of 
some advantage that would else have been 
gained: the train is gone; or the steamboat 
is just leaving its moorings ; or the best things 
in the market are sold ; or all the good seats 
in the concert-room are filled. And every 
one, in cases perpetually occurring, may see 



172 EDUCATION. 

that it is the prospective deprivations en- 
tailed by being too late which prevent people 
from being too late. Is not the inference ob- 
vious? Should not these prospective depriva- 
tions control the child's conduct also? If Con- 
stance is not ready at the appointed time, the 
natural result is that of being left behind, 
and losing her walk. And no one can, we 
think, doubt that after having once or twice 
remained at home while the rest were enjoy- 
ing themselves in the fields, and after having 
felt that this loss of a much-prized gratifica- 
tion was solely due to want of promptitude, 
some amendment would take place. At any 
rate, the measure would be more effective 
than that perpetual scolding which ends only 
in producing callousness. 

Again, when children, with more than usual 
carelessness, break or lose the things given to 
them, the natural penalty — the penalty which 
makes grown-up persons more careful — is the 
consequent inconvenience. The want of the 
lost or damaged article, and the cost of sup- 
plying its place, are the experiences by which 
men and women are disciplined in these mat- 
ters; and the experience of children should 
be as much as possible assimilated to theirs. 
We do not refer to that early period at which 
toys are pulled to pieces in the process of 
learning their physical properties, and at 
which the results of carelessness cannot be 
understood; but to a later period, when the 
meaning and advantages of property are per- 
ceived. When a boy, old enough to possess a 



MORAL EDUCATION. 173 

penknife, uses it so roughly as to snap the 
blade, or leaves it in the grass by some hedge- 
side, where he was cutting a stick, a thought- 
less parent, or some indulgent relative, will 
commonly forthwith buy him another; not 
seeing that, by doing this, a valuable lesson 
is lost. In such a case, a father may properly 
explain that penknives cost money, and that 
to get money requires labor ; that he cannot 
afford to purchase new penknives for one 
who loses or breaks them ; and that until he 
sees evidence of greater carefulness he must 
decline to make good the loss. A parallel dis- 
cipline may be used as a means of checking 
extravagance. 

These few familiar instances, here chosen be- 
cause of the simplicity with which they illus- 
trate our point, will make clear to every one 
the distinction between those natural penal- 
ties which we contend are the truly efficient 
ones, and those artificial penalties which par- 
ents conunonly substitute for them. Before 
going on to exhibit the higher and subtler ap- 
plications of this principle, let us note its 
many and great superiorities over the princi- 
ple, or rather the empirical practice, which 
prevails in most families. 

In the first place, right conceptions of cause 
and effect are early formed ; and by frequent 
and consistent experience are eventually ren- 
dered definite and complete. Proper conduct 
in life is much better guaranteed when the 
good and evil consequences of actions are ra- 
tionally understood, than when they are 



m EDUCATION, 

merely believed on authority. A child who 
finds that disorderliness entails the subse- 
quent trouble of putting things in order, or 
who misses a gratification from dilatoriness, 
or whose want of care is followed by the loss 
or breakage of some much-prized possession, 
not only experiences a keenly-felt conse- 
quence, but gains a knowledge of causation : 
both the one and the other being just like 
those which adult life will bring. Whereas 
a child who in such cases receives some rep- 
rimand or some factitious penalty, not only 
experiences a consequence for which it often 
cares very little, but lacks that instruction 
respecting the essential natures of good and 
evil conduct, which it would else have gath- 
ered. It is a vice of the common system of 
artificial rewards and punishments, long since 
noticed by the clear-sighted, that by substi- 
tuting for the natural results of misbehavior 
certain threatened tasks or castigations, it 
produces a radically wrong standfird of moral 
guidance. Having throughout infancy and 
boyhood always regarded parental or tutorial 
displeasure as the result of a forbidden ac- 
tion, the youth has gained an established as- 
sociation of ideas between such action and 
such displeasure, as cause and effect; and 
consequently when parents and tutors have 
abdicated, and their displeasure is not to be 
feared, the restraint on a forbidden action is 
in great measure removed: the true re- 
straints, the natural reactions, having yet to 
be learnt by sad experience. As writes one 



MORAL EDUCATION. 175 

who has had personal knowledge of this short- 
sighted system: — "•Young men let loose from 
school, particularly those whose parents have 
neglected to exert their influence, plunge into 
every description of extravagance ; they know 
no rule of action — they are ignorant of the 
reasons for moral conduct — they have no 
foundation to rest upon — and until they have 
been severely disciplined by the world are ex- 
tremely dangerous members of society." 

Another great advantage of this natural sys- 
tem of discipline is, that it is a system of pure 
justice ; and will be recognized by every child 
as such. Whoso suffers nothing more than 
the evil which obviously follows naturally 
from his own misbehavior, is much less like- 
ly to think himself wrongly treated than if 
he suffers an evil artificially inflicted on him ; 
and this will be true of children as of men. 
Take the case of a boy who is habitually reck- 
less of his clothes — scrambles through hedges 
without caution, or is utterly regardless of 
mud. If he is beaten, or sent to bed, he is apt 
to regard himself as ill-used ; and his mind ia 
more likely to be occupied by thinking over 
his injuries than repenting of his transgres- 
sions. But suppose he is required to rectify 
as far as he can the harm he has done — to 
clean off the mud with which he has cov- 
ered himself, or to mend the tear as well as 
he can. Wfll he not feel that the evil is one 
of his own producing? Will he not while 
paying this penalty be continuously conscious 
of the connection between it and its cause? 



176 EDUCATION. 

And will he not, spite his irritation, recognize 
more or less clearly the justice of the arrange- 
ment? If several lessons of this kind fail to 
produce amendment — if suits of clothes are 
prematurely spoiled — if pursuing this same 
system of discipline a father declines to spend 
money for new ones until the ordinary time 
has elapsed — and if, meanwhile, there occur 
occasions on which, having no decent clothes 
to go in, the boy is debarred from joining the 
rest of the family on holiday excursions and 
fete days, it is manifest that while he will 
keenly feel the punishment, he can scarcely 
fail to trace the chain of causation, and to 
perceive that his own carelessness is the ori- 
gin of it; and seeing this, he will not have 
that same sense of injustice as when there is 
no obvious connection between the transgres- 
sion and its penalty. 

Again, the tempers both of parents and 
children are much less liable to be rufiied 
under this system than under the ordinary 
system. Instead of letting children expe- 
rience the painful results which naturally fol- 
low from wrong conduct, the usual course 
pursued by parents is to inflict themselves 
certain other painful results. A double mis- 
chief arises from this. Making, as they do, 
multiplied family laws ; and identifying their 
own supremacy and dignity with the main- 
tenance of these laws; it happens that every 
transgression comes to be regarded as an 
offence against themselves, and a cause of 
anger on their part. Add to which the fur- 



MORAL EDUCATION. 177 

ther irritations which result from taking upon 
themselves, in the shape of extra labor or 
cost, those evil consequences which should 
have been allowed to fall on the wrong-doers. 
Sunilarly with the children. Penalties which 
the necessary reaction of things brings round 
upon them — penalties which are inflicted by 
impersonal agency, produce an irritation that 
is comparatively slight and transient ; where- 
as, penalties which are voluntarily inflicted 
by a parent, and are afterwards remembered 
as caused by him or her, produce an irritation 
both greater and more continued. Just con- 
sider how disastrous would be the result if 
this empirical method were pursued from the 
beginning. Suppose it were possible for par- 
ents to take upon themselves the physical 
sufferings entailed on their children by igno- 
rance and awkwardness ; and tliat while bear- 
ing these evil consequences they visited on 
their children certain other evil consequences, 
with the view of teaching them the impro- 
priety of their conduct. Suppose that when 
a child, who had been forbidden to meddle 
with the kettle, spilt some boiling water on 
its foot, the mother vicariously assumed the 
scald and gave a blow in place of it ; and sim- 
ilarly in all other cases. Would not the daily 
mishaps be sources of far more anger than 
now? Would not there be chronic ill-temper 
on both sides ? Yet an exactly parallel policy 
is pursued in after years. A father who pun- 
ishes his boy for carelessly or wilfully break- 
ing a sister's toy, and then himself pays for a 
12 



178 EDUCATION. 

new toy, does substantially this same thing 
— inflicts an artificial penalty on the trans- 
gressor, and takes the natural penalty on 
himself : his own feelings and those of the 
transgressor being alike needlessly iiTitated, 
If he simply required restitution to be made, 
he would produce far less heartburning. If 
he told the boy that a new toy must be bought 
at his, the boy's cost, and that his supply of 
pocket-money must be withheld to the needful 
extent, there would be much less cause for 
ebullition of temper on either side ; while in 
the deprivation afterwards felt, the boy 
would experience the equitable and salutary 
consequence. In brief, the system of disci- 
pline by natural reactions is less injurious to 
temper, alike because it is perceived on both 
sides to be nothing more than pure justice, 
and because it more or less substitutes the 
impersonal agency of nature for the pei*sonal 
agency of parents. 

Whence also follows the manifest corollary, 
that under this system the parental and filial 
relation will be a more friendly, and there- 
fore a more influential one. Whether in par- 
ent or child, anger, however caused, and to 
whomsoever directed, is more or less detri- 
mental. But anger in a parent towards a 
child, and in a child towards a parent, is es- 
pecially detrimental ; because it weakens that 
bond of sympathy wliich is essential to a be- 
neficent control. In virtue of the general law 
of association of ideas, it inevitably results, 
both in young and old, that dislike iss eon- 



MORAL EDUCATION. 179 

tracted towards things which in our experi- 
ence are habitually connected with disagree- 
able feelings. Or where attachment origi- 
nally existed, it is weakened , or destroyed, or 
turned into repugnance, according to the 
quantity of painful impressions received. 
Parental wrath, with its accompanying repri- 
mands and castigations, cannot fail, if often 
repeated, to produce 'filial alienation; while 
the resentment and sulkiness of children can- 
not fail to weaken the affection felt for them, 
and may even end in destroying it. Hence 
the numerous cases in which parents (and es- 
pecially fathers, who are commonly deputed 
to express the anger and inflict the punish- 
ment) are regarded with indifference, if not 
with aversion ; and hence the equally numer- 
ous cases in which children are looked upon 
as inflictions. Seeing, then, as all must do, 
that estrangement of this kind is fatal to a 
salutary moral culture, it follows that par- 
ents cannot be too solicitous in avoiding oc- 
casions of direct antagonism with their chil- 
dren — occasions of personal resentment. And 
therefore they cannot too anxiously avail 
themselves of this discipline of natural conse- 
quences—this system of letting the penalty be 
• inflicted by the laws of things; which, by 
saving the parent from the function of a 
penal agent, prevents these mutual exaspera- 
tions and estrangements. 

Thus we see that this method of moral cult- 
ure by experience of the normal reactions 
which is the divinely-ordained method cdilzB 



180 EDUCATION, 

for infancy and for adult life, is equally ap- 
plicable during the intermediate childhood 
and youth. And amon^ the advantages of 
this method we see — First. That it gives 
that rational comprehension of right and 
wrong conduct which results from actual ex- 
perience of the good and bad consequences 
caused by them. Second. That the child, 
suffering nothing more than the painful ef- 
fects brought upon it by its own wrong ac- 
tions, must recognize more or less clearly the 
justice of the penalties. Third. That, rec- 
ognizing the justice of the penalties, and re- 
ceiving those penalties through the working 
of things, rather than at the hands of an in- 
dividual, its temper will be less disturbed; 
while the parent occupying the compara- 
tively passive position of taking care that the 
natural penalties are felt, will preserve a com- 
parative equanimity. And Fourth. That 
mutual exasperation being thus in great 
measure prevented, a much happier, and a 
more influential state of feeling, will exist be- 
tween parent and child. 

*' But what is to be done with more serious 
misconduct?" some will ask. "How is this 
plan to be carried out when a petty theft has 
been committed? or when a lie has been told? 
or when some younger brother or sister has 
been ill-used?" 

Before replying to these questions, let us 
consider the bearings of a few illustrative 
facts. 



MORAL EDUCATION. 181 

Living in the family of his brother-in-law, 
a friend of ours had undertaken the educa- 
tion of his little nephew and niece. This he 
had conducted, more perhaps from natural 
sympathy than from reasoned-out conclu- 
sions, in the spirit of the method above set 
forth. The two children were in doors his 
pupils and out of doors his companions. 
They daily joined him in walks and botaniz- 
ing excursions, eagerly sought out plants for 
him, looked on while he examined and iden- 
tified them, and in this and other ways were 
ever gaining both pleasure and instruction in 
his society. In short, morally considered, he 
stood to them much more in the position of 
parent than either their father or mother did. 
Describing to us the results oi this poHcy, he 
gave, among other instances, the following. 
One evening, having need for some article ly- 
ing in another part of the house, he asked hi« 
nephew to fetch it for him. Deeply inter- 
ested as the boy was in some amusement of 
the moment, he, contrary to his wont, either 
exhibited great reluctance or refused, we for- 
get which. His uncle, disapproving of a co- 
ercive course, fetched it himself ; merely ex- 
hibiting by his manner the annoyance this 
ill-behavior gave him. And when, later in 
the evening, the boy made overtures for the 
usual play, they were gravely repelled— the 
uncle manifested just that coldness of feeling 
naturally produced in him, and so let the boy 
experience the necessary consequences of his 
conduct. Next morning at the usual time 



182 EDUCATION. 

for rising, our friend heard a new voice out- 
side the door, and in walked his Httle nephew 
with the hot water ; and then the boy, peer- 
ing about the room to see what else could be 
done, exclaimed, " Oh ! you want your boots," 
and forthwith rushed down stairs to fetch 
them. In this and other ways he showed a 
true penitence for his misconduct ; he endeav- 
ored by unusual services to make up for the 
service he had refused; his higher feelings 
had of themselves conquered his lower ones, 
and acquired strength by the conquest ; and 
he valued more than before the friendship he 
thus regained. 

This gentleman is now himself a father; 
acts on the same system ; and finds it answer 
completely. He makes himself thoroughly 
his children's friend. The evening is longed 
for by them because he will be at home; and 
they especially enjoy the Sunday because he 
is with them all day. Thus possessing their 
perfect confidence and affection, he finds that 
the simple display of his approbation or dis- 
approbation gives him abundant power of 
control. If, on his return home, he hears that 
one of his boys has been naughty, he behaves 
towards him with that comparative coldness 
which the consciousness of the boy's miscon- 
duct naturally produces ; and he finds this a 
most efficient punishment. The mere with- 
holding of the usual caresses, is a source of 
the keenest distress— produces a much more 
prolonged fit of crying than a beating would 
do. And the dread of this purely moral penal- 



MORAL EDUCATION, 183 

ty is, he says, ever present during his absence : 
so much so, that frequently during the day his 
children inquire of their mamma how they 
have behaved, and whether the report will be 
good. Eecently, the eldest, an active urchin 
of five, in one of those btirsts of animal spirits 
common in healthy children, committed sun- 
dry extravagances during his mamma's ab- 
sence—cut off part of his brother's hair and 
wounded himself with a razor taken from his 
father's dressing-case. Hearing of these oc- 
currences on his return, the father did not 
speak to the boy either that night or next 
morning. Not only was the tribulation great, 
but the subsequent effect was, that when, a 
few days after, the mamma was about to go 
out, she was earnestly entreated by the boy 
not to do so ; and on inquiry, it appeared his 
fear was that he might again transgress in 
her absence. 

We have introduced these facts before reply- 
ing to the question— " What is to be done with 
the graver offences?" for the purpose of first 
exhibiting the relation that may and ought to 
be established between parents and children ; 
for on the existence of this relation depends the 
successful treatment of these graver offences. 
And as a further preliminary, we must now 
point out that the establishment of this rela- 
tion will result from adopting the system we 
advocate. Already we have shown that by 
letting a child experience simply the painful 
reactions of ite mvn wrong actions; a parent i^ 
great measure avoids assuming the attitude 



184 EDUCATION. 

of an en^my, and escapes being regarded as 
one; but it still remains to be shown that 
where this course has been consistently pur- 
sued from the beginning, a strong feeling of ac- 
tive friendship will be generated. 

At present, mothers and fathers are mostly 
considered by their offspring as friend- 
enemies. Determined as their impressions 
inevitably are by the treatment they receive ; 
and oscillating as that treatment does between 
bribery and thwarting, between petting and 
scolding, between gentleness and castigation ; 
children necessarily acquire conflicting beliefs 
respecting the parental character. A mother 
commonly thinks it quite sufficient to tell her 
little boy that she is his best friend ; and as- 
suming that he is in duty bound to believe 
her, concludes that he will forthwith do so. 
" It is all for your good; " "I know what is 
proper for you better than you do yourself ; " 
"You are not old enough to understand it 
now, but when you grow up you will thank 
me for doing what I do; " — these, and like as- 
sertions, are daily reiterated. Meanwhile the 
boy is daily suffering positive penalties ; and 
is hourly forbidden to do this, that, and the 
other, which he was anxious to do. By words 
he hears that his happiness is the end in view ; 
but from the accompanying deeds he habitu- 
ally receives more or less pain. Utterly in- 
competent as he is to understand that future 
which his mother has in view, or how this 
treatment conduces to the happiness of that 
future, he judges by such results as he feels ; 



MORAL EDUCATION. 185 

and finding these results anything but pleas- 
urable, he becomes sceptical respecting these 
professions of friendship. And is it not folly 
to expect any other issue? Must not the child 
judge by such evidence as he has got? and 
does not this evidence seem to warrant his 
conclusion? The mother would reason in just 
the same way if similarly placed. If, in the 
circle of her acquaintance, she found some one 
who was constantly thwarting her wishes, ut- 
tering sharp reprimands, and occasionally in- 
flicting actual penalties on her, she would pay 
but little attention to any professions of anxie- 
ty for her welfare which accompanied these 
acts. Why, then, does she suppose that her 
boy will conclude otherwise? 

But now observe how different will be the 
results if the system we contend for be con- 
sistently pursued — if the mother not only 
avoids becoming the instrument of punish- 
ment, but plays the part of a friend, by warn- 
ing her boy of the punishments which Nature 
will inflict. Take a case; and that it may il- 
lustrate the mode in which this policy is to bt 
early initiated, let it be one of the simplest 
cases. Suppose that, prompted by the exper- 
imental spirit so conspicuous in children, 
whose proceedings instinctively conform to 
the inductive method of inquiry — suppose that 
so prompted the child is amusing himself by . 
lighting pieces of paper in the candle and 
watching them burn. If his mother is of the 
ordinary unreflective stamp, she will either, 
on the plea of keeping the child ' ' out of mis- 



186 EDUCATION. 

chief," or from fear that he will burn himself , 
command him to desist ; and in case of non- 
compliance will snatch the paper from him. 
On the other hand, should he be so fortunate 
as to have a mother of sufficient rationality, 
who knows that this interest with which the 
child is watching the paper burn results from 
a healthy inquisitiveness, without which he 
would never have emerged out of infantine 
stupidity, and who is also wise enough to 
consider the moral results of interference, 
she will reason thus: — "If I put a stop to 
this I shall prevent the acquirement of a 
certain amount of knowledge. It is true 
that I may save the child from a burn; but 
what then? He is sure to burn himself some- 
time •, and it is quite essential to his safety in 
life that he should learn by experience the 
properties of flame. Moreover, if I forbid him 
from running this present risk, he is sure here- 
after to run the same or a greater risk when 
no one is present to prevent him ; whereas, if 
he should have any accident now that I am 
by, I can save him from any great injury; 
add to which the advantage that he will have 
in future some dread of fire, and will be less 
likely to burn himself to death, or set the 
house in a flame when others are absent. 
Furthermore, were I to make him desist, I 
should thwart him in the pursuit of what is in 
itself a purely harmless, and indeed, instruct- 
ive gratification ; and he would be sure to re- 
gard me witli moi^ or loss ill-feeling. Igno- 
rant as he is of the pain from which I would 



MORAL EDUCATION. 187 

save him, and feeling only the pain of a 
balked desire, he could not fail to look upon 
me as the cause of that pain. To save him 
from a hurt which he cannot conceive, and 
which has therefore no existence for him, I 
inflict upon him a hurt which he feels keenly 
enough ; and so become, from his point of view, 
a minister of evil. My best course then, is 
simply to warn him of the danger, and to be 
ready to prevent any serious damage." And 
following out this conclusion, she says to the 
child — " I fear you will hurt youreelf if you 
do that." Suppose, now, that the child per- 
severes, as he will very probably do ; and sup- 
pose that he ends by burning himself. What 
are the results? In the first place he has 
gained an experience which he must gain 
eventually, and which, for his own safety he 
cannot gain too soon. And in the second place, 
he has found that his mother's disapproval or 
warning was meant for his welfare : he has a 
further positive experience of her benevolence 
— a further reason for placing confidence in 
her judgment and her kindness— a further 
reason for loving her. 

Of course, in those occasional hazards 
where there is a risk of broken limbs or other 
serious bodily injury, forcible prevention is 
called for. But leaving out these extreme 
cases, the system pursued should be not that 
of guarding a child against the small dangers 
into which it daily runs, but that of advising 
and warning it against them. And by con- 
sistently pursuing this course, a much strong- 



1JB8 EDUCATION. 

er filial affection will be generated than com- 
monly exists. If here, as elsewhere, the disci- 
pline of the natural reactions is allowed to 
come into play — if in all those out-of-door 
scramblings and in-door experiments, by 
which children are liable to hurt themselves, 
they are allowed to persevere, subject only to 
dissuasion more or less earnest according to 
the risk, there cannot fail to arise an ever-in- 
creasing faith in the parental friendship and 
guidance. Not only, as before shown, does 
the adoption of this principle enable fathers 
and mothers to avoid the chief part of that 
odium which attaches to the infliction of pos- 
itive punishment ; but, as we here see, it ena- 
bles them further to avoid the odium that at- 
taches to constant thwartings; and even to 
turn each of those incidents which commonly 
cause squabbles, into a means of strengthen- 
ing the mutual good feeling. Instead of be- 
ing told in words, which deeds seem to con- 
tradict, that their parents are their best 
friends, children will learn this truth by a 
consistent daily experience ; and so learning 
it, will acquire a degree of trust and attach- 
ment which nothing else can give. 

And now having indicated the much more 
sympathetic relation which must result from 
the habitual use of this method, let us re- 
turn to the question above put— How is 
this method to be applied to the graver of- 
fences? 

Note, in the first place, that these graver 
offences are likely to be both less frequent and 



MOBAL EDUCATION. 189 

less grave under the regime we have described 
than under the ordinary regime. The perpet- 
ual ill-behavior of many children is itself the 
consequence of that chronic irritation in 
which they are kept by bad management. 
The state of isolation and antagonism pro- 
duced by frequent punishment, necessarily 
deadens the sympathies; necessarily, there- 
fore, opens the way to those transgressions 
which the sympathies showld check. That 
harsh treatment which children of the same 
family inflict on each other is often, in great 
measure, a reflex of the harsh treatment they 
receive from adults— partly suggested by di- 
rect example, and partly generated by the ill- 
temper and the tendency to vicarious retalia- 
tion, which follow chastisements and scold- 
ings. It cannot be questioned that the greater 
activity of the affections and happier state of 
feeling, maintained in children by the disci- 
pline we have described, must prevent their 
sins against each other from being either so 
great or so frequent. Moreover, the still 
more reprehensible offences, as lies and petty 
thefts, will, by the same causes, be dunin- 
ished. Domestic estrangement is a fruitful 
source of such transgressions. It is a law of 
human nature, visible enough to all who ob- 
serve, that those who are debarred the higher 
gratifications fall back upon the lower ; those 
who have no sympathetic pleasures seek self- 
ish ones ; and hence, conversely, the mainte- 
nance of happier relations between parents 
and children is calculated to diminish the 



190 EDUCATION. 

number of those offences of which selfishness 
is the origin. 

When, however, such pffences are commit- 
ted, as they will occasionally be even under 
the best system, the discipline of conse- 
quences may still be resorted to ; and if there 
exist that bond of confidence and affection 
which we have described, this discipline will 
be found efficient. For what are the natural 
consequences, sa^, of a theft? They are of 
two kinds— direct and indirect. The direct 
consequence, as dictated by pure equity, is 
that of making restitution. An absolutely 
just ruler (and every parent should aim to be 
one) will demand that, wherever it is possi- 
ble, a wrong act shall be undone by a right 
one: and in the case of theft this implies 
either the restoration of the thing stolen, or, 
if it is consumed, then the giving of an equiv- 
alent : which, in the case of a child, may be 
effected out of its pocket-money. The indi- 
rect and more serious consequence is the 
grave displeasure of parents — a consequence 
which inevitably follows among all peoples 
sufficiently civilized to regard theft as a 
crime ; and the manifestation of this displeas- 
ure is, in this instance, the most severe of 
the natural reactions produced by the wrong 
action. " But," it will be said, " the manifes- 
tation of parental displeasure, either in words 
or blows, is the ordinary course in these 
cases: the method leads here to nothing 
new." Very true. Already we have ad- 
mitted that, in some directions, this method 



MOEAL EDUCATION. 191 

is spontaneously pursued. Already we have 
shown that there is a more or less manifest 
tendency for educational systems to gravi- 
tate towards the true system. And here we 
may remark, as before, that the intensity of 
this natural reaction will, in the beneficent 
order of things, adjust itself to the require- 
ments — that this parental displeasure will 
vent itself in violent measures during com- 
paratively barbarous times, when the chil- 
dren are also comparatively barbarous ; and 
will express itself less cruelly in those more 
advanced social states in which, by implica- 
tion, the children are amenable to milder 
treatment. But what it chiefly concerns us 
here to observe is, that the manifestation of 
strong parental displeasure, produced by one 
of these graver offences, will be potent for 
good just in proportion to the warmth of the 
attachment existing between parent and child. 
Just in proportion as the discipline of the natur- 
al consequences has been consistently pursued 
in other cases, will it be efficient in this case. 
Proof is within the experience of all, if they 
will look for it. 

For does not every man know that when 
he has offended another person, the amount 
of genuine regret he feels (of course, leaving 
worldly considerations out of the question) 
varies with the degree of sympathy he has 
for that person. Is he not conscious that 
when the person offended stands to him in the 
position of an enemy, the having given him 
annoyance is apt to be a source rather of se- 



192 EDUCATION. 

cret satisfaction than of sorrow? Does he 
not remember that where umbrage has been 
taken by some total stranger, he has felt 
much less concern than he would have done 
had such umbrage been taken by one with 
whom he was intimate? While, conversely, 
has not the anger of an admired and cher- 
ished friend been regarded by him as a 
serious misfortune, long and keenly regret- 
ted? Clearly, then, the effects of parental 
displeasure upon children must similarly 
depend upon the pre-existing relationship. 
Where there is an established alienation, the 
feehng of a child who has transgressed is a 
purely selfish fear of the evil consequences 
likely to fall upon it in the shape of physical 
penalties or deprivations; and after these 
evil consequences have been inflicted, there 
are aroused an antagonism and dislike which 
are morally injurious, and tend further to 
increase the alienation. On the contrary, 
where there exists a warm filial affection pro- 
duced by a consistent parental friendship— a 
friendship not dogmatically asserted as an 
excuse for punishments and denials, but 
daily exhibited in ways that a child can com- 
prehend — a friendship which avoids need- 
less thwartings, which warns against im- 
pending evil consequences, and which sym- 
pathizes with juvenile pursuits— there the 
state of mind caused by i)arental displeasure 
will not only be salutary as a check to future 
misconduct of like kind, but will also be in- 
trinsically salutary. The moral pain conse- 



MOBAL EDUCATION. 193 

quent upon having, for the time being, lost 
so loved a friend, will stand in place of the 
physical pain usually inflicted; and where 
this attachment exists, will prove equally, if 
not more, efficient. While instead of the 
fear and vindictiveness excited by the one 
course, there will be excited by the other 
more or less of sympathy with parental sor- 
row, a genuine regret for having caused it, 
and a desire, by some atonement, to re-estab- 
lish the habitual friendly relationship. In- 
stead of bringing into play those purely ego- 
istic feelings whose predominance is the 
cause of criminal acts, there will be brought 
into play those altruistic feelings which check 
criminal acts. Thus the discipline of the 
natural consequences is applicable to grave 
as well as trivial faults ; and the practice of 
it conduces not simply to the repression, but 
to the eradication of such faults. 

In brief, the truth is that savageness begets 
savageness, and gentleness begets gentleness. 
Children who are unsympathetically treat- 
ed become relatively unsympathetic ; where- 
as treating them with due fellow-feeling is 
a means of cultivating their fellow-feeling. 
With family governments as with political 
ones, a harsh despotism itself generates a 
great part of the crimes it has to repress; 
while conversely a mild and liberal rule not 
only avoids many causes of dissension, but 
so ameliorates the tone of feeling as to dimin- 
ish the tendency to transgression. As John 
Locke long since remarked, " Great severity 
13 



194 EDUCATION. 

of punishment does but very little good, nay, 
great harm, in education; and I believe it 
will be found that, cceteris paribus, those 
children who have been most chastised sel- 
dom make the best men." In confirmation 
of which opinion we may cite the fact not 
long since made public by Mr. Rogers, Chap- 
lain of the Pentonville Prison, that those ju- 
venile criminals who have been whipped are 
those who most frequently return to prison. 
On the other hand, as exhibiting the benefi- 
cial effects of a kinder treatment, we will in- 
stance the fact stated to us by a French lady, 
in whose house we recently staid in Paris. 
Apologizing for the disturbance daily caused 
by a little boy who was unmanageable both 
at home and at school, she expressed her fear 
that there was no remedy save that which 
had succeeded in the case of an elder brother; 
namely, sending him to an English school. 
She explained that at various schools in 
Paris this elder brother had proved utterly 
untractable; that in despair they had fol- 
lowed the advice to send him to England; 
and that on his return home he was as good 
as he had before been bad. And this remark- 
able change she ascribed entirely to the com- 
parative mildness of the English discipline. 

After this exposition of principles, our re- 
maining space may best be occupied by a few 
of the chief maxims and rules deducible from 
them ; and with a view to brevity we will put 
these in a more or less hortatory form. 

Do not expect from a child any great 



MORAL EDUCATION. 195 

amount of moral goodness. During early- 
years every civilized man passes through that 
phase of character exhibited by the barbarous 
race from which he is descended. As the 
child's features — flat nose, forward-opening 
nostrils, large lips, wide-apart eyes, absent 
frontal sinus, etc. — resemble for a time those 
of the savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence 
the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving, to ly- 
ing, so general among children — tendencies 
which, even without the aid of discipline, will 
become more or less modified just as the feat- 
ures do. The popular idea that children are 
"innocent," while it may be true in so far as 
it refers to evil knowledge, is totally false in 
so far as it refers to evil impulses, as half an 
hour's observation in the nursery will prove 
to any one. Boys when left to themselves, 
as at a public school, treat each other far 
more brutally than men do; and were they 
left to themselves at an earlier age their bru- 
tality would be still more conspicuous. 

Not only is it unwise to set up a high stand- 
ard for juvenile good conduct, but it is even 
unwise to use very urgent incitements to such 
good conduct. Already most people recog- 
nize the detrimental results of intellectual 
precocity ; but there remains to be recognized 
the truth that there is a moral precocity 
which is also detrimental. Our higher moral 
faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, 
are comparatively complex. By consequence 
they are both comparatively late in their evo- 
lution. And with the one as with the other, 



196 EDUCATION. 

a very early activity produced by stimulation 
will be at the expense of the future character. 
Hence the not uncommon fact that those who 
during childhood were instanced as models 
of juvenile goodness, by and by undergo some 
disastrous and seemingly inexplicable change, 
and end by being not above but below par ; 
while relatively exemplary men are often the 
issue of a childhood by no means so promis- 
ing. 

Be content, therefore, with moderate meas- 
ures and moderate results. Constantly bear 
in mind the fact that a higher morality, like 
a higher intelligence, must be reached by a 
slow growth; and you will then have more 
patience with those imperfections of nature 
which your child hourly displays. You will 
be less prone to that constant scolding, and 
threatening, and forbidding, by which many 
parents induce a chronic domestic irritation, 
in the foolish hope that they will thus make 
their children what they should be. 

This comparatively liberal form of domestic 
government, which does not seek despotically 
to regulate all the details of a child's conduct, 
necessarily results from the system for which 
we have been contending. Satisfy yourself 
with seeing that your cliild always suffers 
the natural consequences of his actions, and 
you will avoid that excess of control in which 
so many parents err. Leave him wherever 
you can to the discipline of experience, and 
you will so save him from that hothouse 
virtue which over-regulation produces in 



MORAL EDUCATION. 197 

yielding natures, or that demoralizing antago- 
nism which it produces in independent ones. 

By aiming in all cases to administer the 
natural reactions to your child's actions, you 
will put an advantageous check upon your 
own temper. The method of moral education 
pursued by many, we fear by most, parents, 
is little else than that of venting their anger 
in the way that first suggests itself. The 
slaps, and rough shakings, and sharp words, 
with which a mother commonly visits her 
offspring's small offences (many of them not 
offences considered intrinsically), are very 
generally but the manifestations of her own 
ill-controlled feelings — result much more 
from the promptings of those feelings than 
from a wish to benefit the offenders. While 
they are injurious to her own character, these 
ebullitions tend, by ahenating her children 
and by decreasing their respect for her, to 
diminish her influence over them. But by 
pausing in each case of transgression to con- 
sider what is the natural consequence, and 
how that natural consequence may best be 
brought home to the transgressor, some little 
time is necessarily obtained for the mas- 
tery of yourself; the mere blind anger first 
aroused in you settles down into a less vehe- 
ment feeling, and one not so likely to mis- 
lead you. 

Do not, however, seek to behave as an 
utterly passionless instrument. Eemember 
that besides the natural consequences of your 
child's conduct which the working of things 



198 EDUCATION. 

tends to bring round on him, your own ap- 
probation or disapprobation is also a natural 
consequence, and one of tiie ordained agen- 
cies for guiding him. The terror which w^e 
have been combating is that of substituting 
parental displeasure and its artificial penal- 
ties, for the penalties which nature has estab- 
lished. But while it should not be substituted 
for these natural penalties, it by no means 
follows that it should not, in some form, ac- 
company them. The secondary kind of pun- 
ishment should not usurp the place of the 
primary kind; but, in moderation, it may 
rightly supplement the primary kind. Such 
amount of disapproval, or sorrow, or indigna- 
tion, as you feel, should be expressed in words 
or manner or otherwise ; subject, of course, 
to the approval of your judgment. The 
degree and kind of feeling produced in 
you will necessarily depend upon your 
own character, and it is therefore useless 
to say it should be this or that. All that 
can be recommended is, that you should aim 
to modify the feeling into that which you 
believe ought to be entertained. Beware, 
however, of the two extremes; not onjy in 
respect of the intensity, but in respect of the 
duration of your displeasure. On the one 
hand, anxiously avoid that weak impulsive- 
ness, so general among mothers, which scolds 
and forgives almost in the same breath. On 
the other hand, do not unduly continue to 
show estrangement of feeling, lest you accus- 
tom your child to do without your friendship 



MORAL EDUCATION. 199 

and so lose your influence over him. The 
moral reactions called forth from you by your 
child's actions, you should as much as possi- 
ble assimilate to those which you conceive 
would be called forth from a parent of per- 
fect nature. 

Be sparing of commands. Command only 
in those cases in which other means are inap- 
plicable, or have failed. " In frequent orders 
the parents' advantage is more considered 
than the child's," says Richter. As in primi- 
tive societies a breach of law is punished, not 
so much because it is intrinsically wrong as 
because it is a disregard of the king's author- 
ity — a rebellion against him ; so in many fam- 
ilies, the penalty visited on a transgressor 
proceeds less from reprobation of the offence 
than from anger at the disobedience. Listen 
to the ordinary speeches— " How dare you 
disobey me? " "I tell you I'll make you do it, 
sir." " I'll soon teach you who is 7naster^^— 
and then consider what the words, the tone, 
and the manner imply. A determination to 
subjugate is much more conspicuous in them 
than an anxiety for the child's welfare. For 
the time being the attitude of mind differs but 
little from that of the despot bent on punish- 
ing a recalcitrant subject. The right-feeling 
parent, however, like the philanthropic legis- 
lator, will not rejoice in coercion, but will re- 
joice in dispensing with coercion. He will do 
without law in all cases where other modes of 
regulating conduct can be successfully em- 
ployed ; and he will regret the having recourse 



200 EDUCATION. 

to law when it is necesssary. As Richter re- 
marks — " The best rule in politics is said to be 
'pas trop gouverner:'' it is also true in educa- 
tion." And in spontaneous conformity with 
this maxim, parents whose lust of dominion 
is restrained by a true sense of duty, will aim 
to make their children control themselves 
wherever it is possible, and will fall back upon 
absolutism only as a last resort. 

But whenever you do command, command 
with decision and consistency. If the case is 
one which really cannot be otherwise dealt 
with, then issue your fiat, and having issued 
it, never afterwards swerve from it. Consider 
well beforehand what you are going to do ; 
weigh all the consequences; think whether 
your firmness of purpose will be sufficient; 
and then, if you finally make the law, enforce 
it uniformly at whatever cost. Let your pen- 
alties be like the penalties inflicted by inani- 
mate nature — inevitable. The hot cinder 
burns a child the first time he seizes it; it 
burns him the second time ; it burns him the 
third time ; it burns him every time ; and he 
very soon learns not to touch the hot cinder. 
If you are equally consistent— if the conse- 
quences which you tell your child will follow 
certain acts, follow with like uniformity, he 
will soon come to respect your laws as he does 
those of Nature. And this respect once estab- 
lished will prevent endless domestic evils. Of 
errors in education one of the worst is that of 
inconsistency. As in a community, crimes 
multiply when there is no certain administrar 



MORAL EDUCATION. 201 

tion of justice; so in a family, an immense 
increase of transgressions results from a hesi- 
tating or irregular infliction of penalties. A 
weak mother, who perpetually threatens and 
rarely performs — who makes rules in haste 
and repents of them at leisure — who treats 
the same offence now with severity and 
now with leniency, according as the passing 
humor dictates, is laying up miseries both 
for herself and her children. She is making 
herself contemptible in their eyes ; she is set- 
ting them an example of uncontrolled feelings ; 
she is encouraging them to transgress by the 
prospect of probable impunity ; she is entail- 
ing endless squabbles and accompanying dam- 
age to her own temper and the tempers of her 
little ones ; she is reducing their minds to a 
moral chaos, which after-years of bitter expe- 
rience will with difficulty bring into order. 
Better even a barbarous form of domestic 
government carried out consistently, than a 
humane one inconsistently carried out. Again 
we say, avoid coercive measures whenever it 
is possible to do so ; but when you find despot- 
ism really necessary, be despotic in good 
earnest. 

Bear constantly in mind the truth that the 
aim of your discipline should be to produce a 
self-governing being ; not to produce a being 
to be governed by others. Were your children 
fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could 
not too much accustom them to slavery dur- 
ing their childhood ; but as they are by and by 
to be free men, with no one to control their 



202 EDUCATION. 

daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom 
them to self-control while they are still under 
your eye. This it is which makes the system 
of discipline by natural consequences, so espe- 
cially appropriate to the social state which we 
in England have now reached. Under early, 
tyrannical forms- of society, when one of the 
chief evils the citizen had to fear was the an- 
ger of his superiors, it was well that during 
childhood parental vengeance should be a 
predominant means of government. But now 
that the citizen has little to fear from any one 
— now that the good or evil which he experi- 
ences throughout life is mainly that which in 
the nature of things results from his own con- 
duct, it is desirable that from his first years 
he should begin to learn, experimentally, the 
good or evil consequences which naturally fol- 
low this or that conduct. Aim, therefore, to 
diminish the amount of parental government 
as fast as you can substitute for it in your 
cliild's mind that self-government arising 
from a foresight of results. In infancy a con- 
siderable amount of absolutism is necessary. 
A three-year-old urchin playing with an open 
razor, cannot be allowed to learn by this dis- 
cipline of consequences ; for the consequences 
may, in such a case, be too serious. But as 
intelligence increases, the number of instances 
calling for peremptory interference may be, 
and should be, diminished ; with the view of 
gradually ending them as maturity is ap- 
proached. All periods of transition are dan- 
\ gerous ; and the most dangerous is the transi- 



MORAL EDUCATION. 203 

tion fo m the restraint of the family circle to 
the non-restraint' of the' world. Hence the 
importance of pursuing the policy we advo- 
cate; which, alike by cultivating a child's 
faculty of self-restraint, by continually in- 
creasing the degree in which it is left to its 
self-constraint, and by so bringing it, step 
by step, to a state of unaided self-restraint, 
obliterates the ordinary sudden and hazard- 
ous change from externally -governed youth 
to internally governed maturity. Let the his- 
tory of your domestic rule typify, in little, the 
history of our political rule : at the outset, au- 
tocratic control, where control is really need- 
ful ; by and by an incipient constitutionalism, 
in which the liberty of the subject gains some 
express recognition ; successive extensions of 
this liberty of the subject; gradually ending 
in parental abdication. 

Do not regret the exhibition of considerable 
self-will on the part of your children. It is 
the correlative of that diminished coercive 
ness so conspicuous in modern education. 
The greater tendency to assert freedom of ac- 
tion on the one side, corresponds to the 
smaller tendency to tyrannize on the other. 
They both indicate an approach to the sys- 
tem of discipline we contend for, under which 
children will be more and more led to rule 
themselves by the experience of natural con- 
sequences ; and they are both the accompani- 
ments of our more advanced social state. 
The independent English boy is the father of 
the independent ^English man ; and you can- 



204 EDUCATION. 

not have the last without the first. German 
teachers say that they had rather manage a 
dozen German boys than one English one. 
Shall we, therefore, wish that our boys had 
the manageableness of the German ones, and 
with it the submissiveness and political serf- 
dom of adult Germans ? Or shall we not 
rather tolerate in our boys those feelings 
which make them free men, and modify our 
methods accordingly ? 

Lastly, always remember that to educate 
rightly is not a simple and easy thing, but a 
complex and extremely difficult thing: the 
hardest task which devolves upon adult life. 
The rough and ready style of domestic gov- 
ernment is indeed practicable by the meanest 
and most uncultivated intellects. Slaps anjd^ 
sharp words are penalties that suggest them- 
selves alike to the least reclaimed barbarian 
and the most stolid peasant. Even brutes 
can use this method of discipline ; as you may 
see in the growl and half-bite with which a 
bitch will check a too-exigeant puppy. But 
if you would carry out with success a rational 
and civilized system, you must be prepared 
for considerable mental exertion — for some 
study, some ingenuity, some patience, some 
self-control. You will have habitually to 
trace the consequences of conduct— to consid- 
er what are the results which in adult life 
follow certain kind of acts ; and then you will 
have to devise methods by which parallel 
results shall be entailed on the parallel acts 
of your children. You will daily be called 



MORAL EDUCATION. 205 

upon to analyze the motives of juvenile con- 
duct : you must distinguish between acts that 
are really good and those which, though ex- 
ternally simulating them, proceed from infe- 
rior impulses: while you must be ever on 
your guard against the cruel mistake not un- 
frequently made, of translating neutral acts 
into transgressions, or ascribing worse feel- 
ings than were entertained. You must more 
or less modify your method to suit the dispo- 
sition of each child ; and must be prepared to 
make further modifications as each child's 
disposition enters on a new phase. Your 
faith will often be taxed to maintain the re- 
quisite perseverance in a course which seems 
to produce little or no eifect. Especially if 
you are dealing with children who have been 
wrongly treated, you must be prepared for a 
lengthened trial of patience -before succeeding 
with better methods ; seeing that that which 
is not easy even where a right state of feeling 
has been established from the beginning, be- 
comes doubly difficult when a wrong state of 
feeling has to be set right. Not only will you 
have constantly to analyze the motives of 
your children, but you will have to analyze 
your own motives — to discruninate between 
those internal suggestions springing from a 
true paternal solicitude, and those which 
spring from your own selfishness, from 
your love of ease, from your lust of 
dominion. And then, more trying still, 
you will have not only to detect, but to curb 
these baser impulses. In brief, you will have 



206 EDUCATION. 

to carry on your higher education at the 
same time that you are educating your chil- 
dren. Intellectually you must cultivate to 
good purpose that most complex of subjects — 
human nature and its laws, as exhibited in your 
children, in yourself, and in the world. Mor- 
ally, you must keep in constant exercise your 
higher feelings, and restrain your lower. It 
is a truth yet remaining to be recognized, that 
the last stage in the mental development of 
each man and woman is to be reached only 
through the proper discharge of the parental 
duties. And when this truth is recognized, it 
will be seen how admirable is the ordination 
in virtue of which human beings are led by 
their strongest affections to subject them- 
selves to ^a discipline which they would else 
elude. 

While some will probably regard this con- 
ception of education as it should be, with 
doubt and discouragement, others will, we 
think, perceive in the exalted ideal which it 
involves, evidence of its truth. That it can- 
not be realized by the impulsive, the un- 
sympathetic, and the short-sighted, but de- 
mands the higher attributes of human nature, 
they will see to be evidence of its fitness for 
the more advanced states of humanity. 
Though it calls for much labor and self-sacri- 
fice, they will see that it promises an abund- 
ant return of happiness, immediate and re- 
mote. They will see that while in its injurious 
effects on both parent and child a bad system 
is twice cursed, a good system is twice blessed 



MORAL EDUCATION. 207 

—it blesses him that trains and him that's 
trained. 

It will be seen that we have said nothing 
in this Chapter about the transcendental dis- 
tinction between right and wrong, of which 
wise men know so little, and children noth- 
ing. All thinkers are agreed that we may 
find the criterion of right in the effect of 
actions, if we do not find the rule there ; and 
that is sufficient for the purpose we have had 
in view. Nor have we introduced the relig- 
ious element. We have confined our inquiries 
to a nearer, and a much more neglected field, 
though a very important one. Our readers 
may supplement our thoughts in any way 
they please ; we are only concerned that they 
should be accepted as far as they go. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 

Equally at the squire's table after the with- 
drawal of the ladies, at the farmers' market- 
ordinary, and at the village ale-house, the 
topic which, after the political question of the 
day, excites perhaps the most!general interest, 
is the management of animals. Riding home 
from hunting, the conversation is pretty sure 
to gravitate towards horse-breeding, and ped- 
igrees, and comments on this or that "good 
point ; " while a day on the moors is very un- 
likely to pass without something being said 
on the treatment of dogs. When crossing the 
fields together from church, the tenants of ad- 
jacent farms are apt to pass from criticisms on 
the sermon to criticisms on the weather, the 
crops, and the stock ; and thence to slide into 
discussions on the various kinds of fodder 
and their feeding qualities. Hodge and Giles, 
after comparing notes over their respective 
pig-styes, show by their remarks that they 
have been more or less observant of their mas- 
ters' beasts and sheep ; and of the effects pro- 
duced on them by this or that kind of treat- 
ment. Nor is it only among the rural popu- 
lation that the regulations of the kennel, the 
stable, the cow-shed, and the sheep-pen, are 
favorite subjects. In towns, too, the numer- 
ic 



210 EDUCATION. 

ous artisans who keep dogs, the young men 
who are rich enough to now and then indulge 
their sporting tendencies, and tlieir more 
staid seniors who talk over agricultural prog- 
ress or read Mr. Mechi's annual reports and 
Mr. Caird's letters to the Times, form, when 
added together, a large portion of the inhab- 
itants. Take the adult males throughout the 
kingdom, and a great majority will be found 
to show some interest in the breeding, rear- 
ing, or training of animals, of one kind or 
other. 

But, during after-dinner conversations, or 
at other times of like intercourse, who hears 
anything said about the rearing of children? 
When the country gentleman has paid his 
daily visit to tlie stable, and personally in- 
spected the condition and treatment of his 
horses ; when he has glanced at his minor live 
stock, and given directions about them ; how 
often does he go up to the nm-sery and exam- 
ine into its dietary, its hours, its ventilation? 
On his library shelves may be found White's 
"Farriery," Stephen's "Book of the Farm," 
Nimrod " On the Condition of Hunters; " and 
with the contents of these he is more or less 
familiar ; but how many books has he read on 
the management of infancy and childhood? 
The fattening properties of oil-cake, the rela- 
tive values of hay and chopped straw, the dan- 
gers of unlimited clover, are points on which 
every landlord, farmer, and peasant has some 
knowledge ; but what proportion of them know 
much about the qualities of the food they give 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 211 

their children, and its fitness to the constitu- 
tional needs of growing boys and girls? Per- 
haps the business interests of these classes 
will be assigned as accounting for this anom- 
aly. The explanation is inadequate, how- 
ever ; see that the same contrast holds more or 
less among other classes. Of a score of towns- 
people few, if any, would prove ignorant of 
the fact that it is undesirable to work a horse 
soon after it has eaten ; and yet, of this same 
score, supposing them all to be fathers, prob- 
ably not one would be found who had consid- 
ered whether the time elapsing between his 
children's dinner and their resumption of les- 
sons was sufficient. Indeed, on cross-exam- 
ination, nearly every man would disclose the 
latent opinion that the regimen of the nursery 
was no concern of his. " Oh, I leave all those 
things to the women," would probably be the 
reply. And in most cases the tone and man- 
ner of this reply would convey the implica- 
tion, that such cares are not consistent with 
masculine dignity. 

Consider the fact from any but the conven- 
tional point of view, and it will seem strange 
that while the raising of first-rate bullocks is 
an occupation on which men of education will- 
ingly bestow much time, inquiry, and thought, 
the bringing up of fine human beings is an 
occupation tacitly voted unworthy of their 
attention. Mammas who have been taught 
little but languages, music, and accomplish- 
ments, aided by nurses full of antiquated prej- 
udices, are held competent regulators of the 



212 EDUCATION. 

food, clothing, and exercise of children. 
Meanwhile the fathers read books and period- 
icals, attend agricultural meetings, try ex- 
periments, and engage in discussions, all with 
the view of discovering how to fatten prize 
pigs ! Infinite pains will be taken to produce 
a racer that shall win the Derby : none to pro- 
duce a modern athlete. Had Gulliver nar- 
rated of the Laputans that the men vied with 
each other in learning how best to rear the 
offspring of other creatures, and were care- 
less of learning how best to rear their own 
offspring, he would have paralleled any of 
the other absurdities he ascribes to them. 

The matter is a serious one, however. Lu- 
dicrous as is the antithesis, the fact it ex- 
presses is not less disastrous. As remarks a 
suggestive writer, the first requisite to suc- 
cess in life is "to be a good animal; " and to 
be a nation of good animals is the first condi- 
tion to national prosperity. Not only is it 
that the event of a war often turns on the 
strength and hardiness of soldiers ; but it is 
that the contests of commerce are in part 
determined by the bodily endurance of pro- 
ducers. Thus far we have found no reason 
to fear trials of strength with other races in 
either of these fields. But there are not want- 
ing signs that our powers will presently be 
taxed to the uttermost. Already under the 
keen competition of modern life, the applica- 
tion required of almost every one is such as 
few can bear without more or less injury. 
Already thousands break down under the 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 213 

high pressure they are subject to. If this 
pressure continues to increase, as it seems 
likely to do, it will try severely all but the 
soundest constitution. Hence it is becoming 
of especial importance that the training of 
children should be so carried on, as not only 
to fit them mentally for the struggle before 
them, but also to make them physically fit to 
bear its excessive wear and tear. 

Happily the matter is beginning to attract 
attention. The writings of Mr. Kingsley in- 
dicate a reaction against over-culture; car- 
ried, as reactions usually are, somewhat too 
far. Occasional letters and leaders in the 
newspapers have shown an awakening inter- 
est in physical training. And the formation 
of a school, significantly nicknamed that of 
"muscular Christianity," implies a growing 
opinion that our present methods of bringing 
up children do not sufficiently regard the wel- 
fare of the body. The topic is evidently ripe 
for discussion. 

To conform the regimen of the nursery and 
the school to the established truths of modern 
science — this is the desideratum. It is time 
that the benefits which our sheep and oxen 
have for years past derived from the investi- 
gations of the laboratory, should be partici- 
pated in by our children. Without calling in 
question the great importance of horse-train- 
ing and pig-feeding, we would suggest that, 
as the rearing of well-grown men and women 
is also of some moment, the conclusions indi- 
cated by theory, and endorsed by practice, 



'2U EDUCATION. 

ought to be acted on in the last case as in the 
first. Probably not a few will be startled^ 
perhaps offended — by this collocation of 
ideas. But it is a fact not to be disputed, 
and to which we had best reconcile our- 
selves, that man is subject to the same 
organic laws as inferior creatures. No anat- 
omist, no physiologist, no chemist, will for a 
moment hesitate to assert, that the general 
principles which rule over the vital processes 
in animals equally rule over the vital proc- 
esses in man. And a candid admission of 
this fact is not without its reward : namely, 
that the truths established by observation and 
experiment on brutes, become more or less 
available for human guidance. Rudimentary 
as is the Science of Life, it has already at- 
tained to certain fundamental principles un- 
derlying the development of all organisms, 
the human included. That which has now to 
be done, and that which we shall endeavor in 
some measure to do, is to show the bearing 
of these fundamental principles upon the 
physical training of childhood and youth. 

The rhythmical tendency which is tracea- 
ble in all departments of social life — which is 
illustrated in Ihe access of despotism after 
revolution, or, among ourselves, in the alter- 
nation of reforming epochs and conservative 
epochs — which, after a dissolute age, brings 
an age of asceticism, and conversely — which, 
in commerce, produces the regularly recur- 
ring inflations and panics —which carries the 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 215 

devotees of fashion from one absurd extreme 
to the opposite one; — this rhythmical ten- 
dency affects also our table-habits, and by im- 
l^lication, the dietary of the young. After a 
period distinguished by hard drinking and 
hard eating, has come a period of compara- 
tive sobriety, which, in teetotalism and vege- 
tarianism, exhibits extreme forms of its pro- 
test against the riotous Uving of the past. 
And along with this change in the regimen 
of adults, has come a parallel change in the 
regimen for boys and girls. In past genera- 
tions, the belief was, that the more a child 
could be induced to eat, the better ; and even 
now, among farmers and in remote districts, 
where traditional ideas most linger, parents 
• may be found who tempt their children to 
gorge themselves. But among the educated 
classes, who chiefly display this reaction tow- 
ards abstemiousness, there may be seen a 
decided leaning to the under-feeding, rather 
than the over-feeding, of children. Indeed 
their disgust for bygone animalism is more 
clearly shown in the treatment " of their off- 
spring than in the treatment of themselves ; 
seeing that while their disguised asceticism 
is, in so far as their personal conduct is con- 
cerned, kept in check by th^ir appetites, it 
has full play in legislating for juveniles. 

That over-feeding and under-feeding are 
both bad, is a truism. Of the two, however, 
the last is the worst. As writes a high au- 
thority, "the effects of casual repletion are 
less prejudicial, and more easily corrected. 



216 ^ EDUCATION. 

than those of inanition. " * Add to which, that 
where there has been no injudicious interfer- 
ence, repletion will seldom occur. "Excess 
is the vice rather of adults than of the young, 
who are rarely either gourmands or epicures, 
unless through the fault of those who rear 
them."t This system of restriction which 
many parents think so necessary, is based 
upon very inadequate observation, and very 
erroneous reasoning. There is an over-legis- 
lation in the nursery, as well as an over-legis- 
lation in the State; and one of the most inju- 
rious forms of it is this limitation in the quan- 
tity of food. 

"But are children to be allowed to surfeit 
themselves? Shall they be suffered to take 
their fill of dainties and make themselves ill, < 
as they certainly will do? " As thus put, the 
question admits of but one reply. But as thus 
put, it assumes the point at issue. We con- 
tend that, as appetite is a good guide to all 
the lower creation — as it is a good guide to the 
infant — as it is a good guide to the invalid — as 
it is a good" guide to the differently-placed 
races of men, and as it is a good guide for 
every adult who leads a healthful life ; it may 
safely be inferred that it is a good guide for 
childhood. It would be strange indeed were 
it here alone untrustworthy. 

Probably not a few will read this reply with 
some impatience ; being able, as they think, 
to cite facts totally at variance with it. It 

* " Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine." 
tibid. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 217 

will appear absurd if we deny the relevancy 
of these facts ; and yet the paradox is quite 
defensible. The Iriith is, that the instances 
of excess which such persons have in mind, 
are usually the consequences of the restrictive 
system they seem to justify. They are the 
sensual reactions caused by a more or less as- 
cetic regimen. They ilhistrate on a small 
scale that commonly remarked fact, that those 
who during youth have been subject to the 
most rigorous discipline, are apt afterwards 
to rush into the wildest extravagances. They 
are analogous to those frightful phenomena, 
once not unconunon in convents, where nuns 
suddenly lapsed from the extremest austeri- 
ties into an almost demoniac wickedness. 
They simply exhibit the uncontrollable vehe- 
mence of a long- denied desire. Consider the 
ordinary tastes and the ordinary treatment 
of children. The love of sweets is conspicu- 
ous and almost universal among them. Prob- 
ably ninety-nine people in a hundred, pre- 
sume that there is nothing more in this than 
gratification of the palate ; and that, in com- 
mon with other sensual desires, it should 
be discouraged. The physiologist, however, 
whose discoveries lead him to an ever-increas- 
ing reverence for the arrangements of things, 
will suspect that there is something more in 
this love of sweets than the current hypoth- 
esis supposes; and a little inquiry confirms 
the suspicion. Any work on organic chem- 
istry shows that sugar plays an important 
part in the vital processes. Both saccharine 



218 EDUCATION. 

and fatty matters are eventually oxidized in 
the body ; and there is an accompanying evo- 
lution of heat. Sugar is the form to which sun- 
dry other compounds have to be reduced be- 
fore they are available as heat-making food ; 
and this formation of sugar is carried on in 
the body. Not only is starch changed into 
sugar in the course of digestion, but it has 
been proved by M. Claude Bernard that the 
liver is a factory in which other constituents 
of food are transformed into sugar. Now, 
when to the fact that children have a marked 
desire for this valuable heat-food, we join the 
fact that they have usually a marked dislike 
to that food which gives out the greatest 
amount of heat during its oxidation (namely, 
fat), we shall see strong reason for thinking 
that excess of the one compensates for defect 
of the other— that the organism demands 
more sugar because it cannot deal with much 
fat. Again, children are usually very fond of 
vegetable acids. Fruits of all kinds are their 
delight ; and, in the absence of anything bet- 
ter, they will devour unripe gooseberries and 
the sourest of crabs. Now, not only are veg- 
etable acids, in common with mineral ones, 
veiy good tonics, and beneficial as such when 
taken in moderation ; but they have, when ad- 
ministered in their natural forms, other ad- 
vantages. "Eipe fruit," says Dr. Andrew 
Combe, ' ' is more freely given on the Conti- 
nent than in this country; and, particularly 
when the bowels act imperfectly, it is often 
very useful." See, then, the discord between 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 219 

the instinctive wants of children and their 
habitual treatment. Here are two dominant 
desires, which there is good reason to beheve 
express certain needs of the juvenile constitu- 
tion; and not only are they ignored in the 
nursery regimen, but there is a general ten- 
dency to forbid the gratification of them. 
Bread-and-milk in the morning, tea and bread- 
and-butter at night, or some dietary equally 
insipid, is rigidly adhered to ; and any minis- 
tration to the palate is thought not only need- 
less but wrong. What is the nesessary con- 
sequence? When, on fete-days there is an un- 
limited access to good things— when a gift of 
pocket-money brings the contents of the con- 
fectioner's window within reach, or when by 
some accident the free run of a fruit -garden is 
obtained ; then the long-denied, and therefore 
intense, desires lead to great excesses. There 
is an impromptu carnival, caused not only by 
the release from past restraints, but also by 
the consciousness that a long Lent will begin 
on the morrow. And then, when the evils of 
repletion display themselves, it is argued that 
children must not be left to the guidance of 
their appetites! These disastrous results of 
artificial restrictions, are themselves cited as 
proving the need for further restrictions! 
We contend, therefore, that the reasoning 
commonly used to justify this system of in- 
terference is vicious. We contend that, were 
children allowed daily to partake of these 
more sapid edibles, for which there is a phys- 
iological requirement, they would rarely ex- 



220 EDUCATION. 

ceed, as they now mostly do when they have 
the opportunity: were fruit, as Dr. Combe 
recommends, "to constitute a part of the reg- 
ular food " (given, as he advises, not between 
meals, but along with them), there would be 
none of that craving which prompts the de- 
vouring of such fruits as crabs and sloes. 
And similarly in other cases. 

Not only is it that the a priori reasons for 
trusting the appetites of children are so 
strong ; and that the reasons assigned for dis- 
trusting them are invalid; but it is that no 
other guidance is worthy of any confidence. 
What is the value of this parental judgment, 
set up as an alternative regulator? When to 
*' Ohver asking for more," the mamma or the 
governess replies in the negative, on what 
data does she proceed? She thinks he has 
had enough. But where are her grounds for 
so thinking? Has she some secret under- 
standing with the boy's stomach — some clair- 
voyant power enabling her to discern the 
needs of his body? If not, how can she 
safely decide? Does she not know that the 
demand of the system for food is determined 
by numerous and involved causes — varies 
with the temperature, with the hygrometric 
state of the air, with the electric state of the 
air — varies also according to the exercise 
taken, according to the kind and quality of 
food eaten at the last meal, and according to 
the rapidity with which the last meal was 
digested? How can she calculate the result of 
such a combination of causes? As we heard 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 221 

said by the father of a five-years-old boy, 
who stands a head taller than most of his age, 
and is proportionately robust, rosy, and ac- 
tive: — "I can see no artificial standard by 
which to mete out his food. If I say, 'this 
much is enough,' it is a mere guess; and the 
guess is as likely to be wrong as right. Con- 
sequently, having no faith in guesses, I let 
him eat his fill." And certainly, any one 
judging of his policy by its effects, would be 
constrained to admit its wisdom. In truth, 
this confidence, with which most parents 
take upon themselves to legislate for the 
stomachs of their children, proves their un- 
acquaintance with the principles of physiol- 
ogy : if they knew more, they would be more 
modest. "The pride of science is humble 
when compared with the pride of ignorance." 
If any one would learn how little faith is to 
be placed in human judgments, and how 
much in the pre-established arrangements of 
things, let him compare the i-ashness of the 
inexperienced physician with the caution of 
the most advanced; or let him dip into Sir 
John Forbes' work, "On Nature and Art in 
the Cure of Disease ; " and he will then see 
that, in proportion as men gain a greater 
knowledge of the laws of life, they come to 
have less confidence in themselves, and more 
in Nature. 

Turning from the question of quantity of 
food to that of quality^ we may discern the 
same ascetic tendency. Not simply a more 
or less restricted diet, but a comparatively 



222 EDUCATION. 

low diet, is thought proper for children. The 
current opinion is, that they should have but 
little animal food. Among the less wealthy- 
classes, economy seems to have dictated this 
opinion — the wish has been father to the 
thought. Parents not affording to buy much 
meat, and liking meat themselves, answer 
the petitions of juveniles with — " Meat is not 
good for little boys and girls ; " and this, at 
first, probably nothing but a convenient ex- 
cuse, has by repetition grown into an article 
of faith. While the classes with whom cost 
is not a consideration, have been swayed 
partly by the example of the majority, partly 
by the influence of nurses drawn from the 
lower classes, and in some measure by the re- 
action against past animalism. 

If, however, we inquire for the basis of this 
opinion, we find little or none. It is a dogma 
repeated and received without proof, like that 
which, for thousands of years, insisted on 
the necessity of swaddling-clothes. It may 
indeed be true that, to the young child's 
stomach, not yet endowed with much muscu- 
lar power, meat, which requires considerable 
trituration before it can be made into chyme, 
is an unfit aliment. But this objection does 
not tell against animal food from which the 
fibrous part has been extracted; nor does it 
apply when, after the lapse of two or three 
years, considerable muscular vigor has been 
acquired. And while the evidence in sup- 
port of this dogma, partially valid in the 
case of very young children, is not valid in 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 223 

the case of older children, who are, neverthe- 
less, ordinarily treated in conformity with 
the dogma, the adverse evidence is abundant 
and conclusive. The verdict of science is ex- 
actly opposite to the popular opinion. We 
have put the question to two of our leading- 
physicians, and to several of the most dis- 
tinguished physiologists, and they uniformly 
agree in the conclusion, that children should 
have a diet not less nutritive, but, if anything, 
more nutritive than that of adults. 

The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, 
and the reasoning simple. It needs but to 
compare the vital processes of a man with 
those of a boy, to see at once that the demand 
for sustenance is relatively greater in the boy 
than in the man. What are the ends for 
which a man requires food? Each day his 
body undergoes more or less wear — wear 
through muscular exertion, wear of the ner- 
vous system through mental actions, wear of 
the viscera in carrying on the functions of life ; 
and the tissue thus wasted has to be renewed. 
Each day, too, by perpetual radiation, his 
body loses a large amount of heat; and as, 
for the continuance of the vital actions, the 
temperature of the body must be maintained, 
this loss has to be compensated by a constant 
production of heat : to which end certain con- 
stituents of the food are unceasingly under- 
going oxidation. To make up for the day's 
waste, and to supply fuel for the day's 
expenditure of heat, are, then, the sole pur- 
poses for which the adult requires food. 



224 EDUCATION, 

Consider, now, the case of the boy. He, too, 
wastes the substance of his body by action ; 
and it needs but to note his restless activity 
to see that, in proportion to his bulk, he 
probably wastes as much as a man. He, too, 
loses heat by radiation ; and, as his body ex- 
poses a greater surface in proportion to its 
mass than does that of a man, and therefore 
loses heat more rapidly, the quantity of heat- 
food he requires is, bulk for bulk, greater 
than that required by a man. So that even 
had the boy no other vital processes to carry 
on than the man has, he would need, rela- 
tively to his size, a somewhat larger supply 
of nutriment. But, besides repairing his 
body and maintaining its heat, the boy has to 
make new tissue — to grow. After waste and 
thermal loss have been provided for, such 
surplus of nutriment as remains, goes to the 
further building up of the frame; and only 
in virtue of this surplus is normal growth 
possible — the growth that sometimes takes 
place in the absence of such surplus, causing 
a manifest prostration consequent upon de- 
fective repair. How peremptory is the de- 
mand of the unfolding organism for materials, 
is seen alike in that ''school-boy hunger," 
which after-life rarely parallels in intensity, 
and in the comparatively quick return of ap- 
petite. And if there needs further evidence 
of this extra necessity for nutriment, we 
have it in the fact that, during the famines 
following shipwrecks and other disasters, the 
children are the first Ijo die. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 225 

This relatively greater need for nutriment 
being admitted, as it must perforce be, the 
question that remains is— shall we meet it by 
giving an excessive quantity of what may be 
called dilute food, or a more moderate quantity 
of concentrated food? The nutriment obtain- 
able from a given weight of meat is obtainable 
only from a larger Aveight of bread, or from a 
still larger weight of potatoes, and so on. To 
fulfil the requirement, the quantity must be 
increased as the nutritiveness is diminished. 
Shall we, then, respond to the extra wants of 
the growing child by giving an adequate 
quantity of food as good as that of adults? 
Or, regardless of the fact that its stomach 
has to dispose of a relatively larger quantity 
even of this good food, shall we further tax it 
by giving an inferior food in still greater 
quantity ? 

The answer is tolerably obvious. The more 
the labor of digestion can be economized, the 
more energy is left for the purposes of growth 
and action. The functions of the stomach 
and intestines cannot be performed without a 
large supply of blood and nervous power; 
and in the comparative lassitude that follows 
a hearty meal, every adult has proof that this 
supply of blood and nervous power is at the 
expense of the system at large. If the re- 
quisite nutriment is furnished by a great 
quantity of innutritions food, more work is 
entailed on the viscera than when it is fur- 
nished by a moderate quantity of nutritious 
food. This extra work is so much sheer loss 
15 



226 EDUCATION. 

— a loss which in children shows itself either 
in diminished energy, or in smaller growth, 
or in both. The inference is, then, that they 
should have a diet which combines, as much 
as possible, nutritiveness and digestibility. 

It is doubtless true that boys and girls may 
be brought up upon an exclusively, or almost 
exclusively, vegetable diet. Among the upper 
classes are to be found children to whom 
comparatively little meat is given ; and who, 
nevertheless, grow and appear in good health. 
Animal food is scarcely tasted by the off- 
spring of laboring people ; and yet they reach 
a healthy maturity. But these seemingly 
adverse facts have by no means the weight 
commonly supposed. In the first place, it 
does not follow that those who in early years 
flourish on bread and potatoes, will eventu- 
ally reach a fine development ; and a compar- 
ison between the agricultural laborers and 
the gentry, in England, or between the mid- 
dle and lower classes in France, is by no 
means in favor of vegetable feeders. In the 
second place, the question is not only a ques- 
tion of bulk, but also a question of quality. A 
soft, flabby flesh makes as good a show as a 
firm one ; but though to the careless eye, a child 
of full, flaccid tissue may appear the equal of 
one whose fibres are well toned, a trial of 
strength will prove the difference. Obesity 
in adults is often a sign of feebleness. Men 
lose weight in training. And hence the ap- 
pearance of these low-fed children is by no 
means conclusive. In the third place, not 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 227 

only size, but energy has to be considered. 
Between children of the meat-eating classes 
and those of the bread-and-potato-eating 
classes, there is a marked contrast in this 
respect. Both in mental and physical vivacity 
the low-fed peasant-boy is greatly inferior to 
the better-fed son of a gentleman. 

If we compare different classes of animals, 
or different races of men, or the same animals 
or men when differently fed, we find still 
more distinct proof that the degree of energy 
essentially depends on the nutritiveness of the 
food. 

In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive a 
food as grass, we see that the immense 
quantity required to be eaten necessitates an 
enormous digestive system; that the limbs, 
small in comparison with the body, are bur- 
dened by its weight; that in carrying about 
this heavy body and digesting this excessive 
quantity of food, a great amount of force is 
expended ; and that, having but little energy 
remaining, the creature is sluggish. Compare 
with the cow a horse — an animal of nearly 
allied structure, but adapted to a more con- 
centrated food. Here we see that the body, 
and more especially its abdominal region, 
bears a much smaller ratio to the limbs ; that 
the powers are not taxed by the support of 
such massive viscera, nor the digestion of so 
bulky a food; and that, as a consequence, 
there is great locomotive energy and consider- 
able vivacity. If, again, we contrast the 
stolid inactivity of the graminivorous sheep 



228 EDUCATION. 

with the Hveliness of the dog, subsisting upon 
flesh or farinaceous food, or a mixture of the 
two, we see a difference similar in kind, but 
still greater in degree. And after walking 
through the Zoological Gardens, and noting 
the restlessness with which the carnivorous 
animals pace up and down their cages, it 
needs but to remember that none of the her- 
bivorous anunals habitually display this 
superfluous energy, to see how clear is the 
relation between concentration of food and 
degree of activity. 

That these differences are not directly con- 
sequent upon differences of constitution, as 
some may argue ; but are directly consequent 
upon differences in the food which the creat- 
ures are constituted to subsist on ; is proved 
by the fact, that they are observable between 
different divisions of the same species. Take 
the case of mankind. The Australians, Bush- 
men, and others of the lowest savages who 
live on roots and berries, varied by larvye of 
insects and the like meagre fare, are compar- 
atively puny in stature, have large abdo- 
mens, soft and undeveloped muscles, and are 
quite unable to cope with Europeans, either 
in a struggle or in prolonged exertion. 
Count up the wild races who are well grown, 
strong and active, as the Kaffirs, North- 
American Indians, and Patagonians, and 
you find them large consumers of flesh. The 
ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the English- 
man fed on more nutritive food ; to whom he 
is as inferior in mental as in physical energy. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 229 

And generally, we think, the history of the 
world shows that the well-fed races have 
been the energetic and dominant races. 

Still stronger, however, becomes the argu- 
ment, when we find that the same individual 
animal becomes capable of more or less exer- 
tion according as its food is more or less nu- 
tritious. This has been clearly demonstrated 
in the case of the horse. Though flesh may 
be gained by a grazing horse, strength is lost ; 
as putting him to hard work proves. " The 
consequence of turning horses out to grass is 
relaxation of the muscular system." " Grass 
is a very good preparation for a bullock for 
Smithfield market, but a very bad one for a 
hunter." It was well known of old that, 
after passing the summer months in the 
fields, hunters required some months of 
stable-feeding before becoming able to follow 
the hounds; and that they did not get into 
good condition until the beginning of the 
next spring. And the modern practice is 
that insisted on by Mr. Apperley — " Never to 
give a hunter what is called ' a summer's run 
at grass,' and, except under particular and 
very favorable circumstances, never to turn 
him out at all. " That is to say, never give him 
poor food: great energy and endurance are 
to be obtained only by the continuous use of 
very nutritive food. So true is this that, as 
proved by Mr. Apperley, prolonged high-feed- 
ing will enable a middling horse to equal, in 
his performances, a first-rate horse fed in the 
ordinary way. To which various evidences 



230 EDUCATION. 

add the familiar fact that, when a horse is re- 
quired to do double duty, it is the practice to 
give him beans — a food containing a larger 
proportion of nitrogenous, or flesh-making 
material, than his habitual oats. 

Once more, in the case of individual men 
the truth has been illustrated with equal, or 
still greater, clearness. We do not refer to 
men in training for feats of strength, whose 
regimen, however, thoroughly conforms to 
the doctrine. We refer to the experience of 
railway contractors and their laborers. It 
has been for years past a well-established fact 
that the English navvy, eating largely of flesh, 
is far more efficient than a Continental navvy 
living on a less nutritive food : so much more 
efficient, that English contractors for Conti- 
nental railways have habitually taken their 
laborers with them. That difference of diet 
and not difference of race caused this superi- 
ority, has been of late distinctly shown. For 
it has turned out, that when the Continental 
navvies live in the same style as their English 
competitors, they presently rise, more or 
less nearly, to a par with them in efficiency. 
To which fact let us here add the converse 
one, to which we can give personal testi- 
mony based upon six months' experience of 
vegetarianism, that abstinence from meat 
entails dmiinished energy of both body and 
mind. 

Do not these various evidences distinctly 
endorse our argument respecting the feeding 
of children? Do they not imply that, even 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 231 

supposing the same stature and bulk to be at- 
tained on an innutritive as on a nutritive diet, 
the quahty of tissue is greatly inferior? Do 
they not establish the position that, where 
energy as well as growth has to be main- 
tained, it can only be done by high feeding? 
Do they not confirm the d priori conclusion 
that, though a child of whom little is ex- 
pected in the way of bodily or mental activi- 
ty, may thrive tolerably well on farinaceous 
substances, a child who is daily required, not 
only to form the due amount of new tissue, 
but to supply the waste consequent on great 
muscular action, and the further waste conse- 
quent on hard exercise of brain, must live on 
substances containing a larger ratio of nutri- 
tive matter? And is it not an obvious corol- 
lary, that denial of this better food will be at 
the expense either of growth, or of bodily ac- 
tivity, or of mental activity ; as constitution 
and circumstances may determine? We be- 
lieve no logical intellect will question it. To 
think otherwise is to entertain in a disguised 
form the old fallacy of the perpetual-motion 
schemers — that it is possible to get power out 
of nothing. 

Before leaving the question of food, a few 
words must be said on another requisite — va- 
riety. In this respect the dietary of the 
young is very faulty. If not, like our sol- 
diers, condemned to "twenty years of boiled 
beef," our children have mostly to bear a mo- 
notony which, though less extreme and less 
lasting, is quite as clearly at variance with 



232 EDUCATION. 

the laws of health. At dinner, it is true, they 
usually have food that is more or less mixed, 
and that is changed day by day. But week 
after week, month after month, year after 
year, comes the same brealcfast of bread-and- 
milk, or, it may be, oatmeal porridge. And 
with like persistence the day is closed, per- 
haps with a second edition of the bread-and- 
milk, perhaps with tea and bread-and-butter. 

This practice is opposed to the dictates of 
physiology. The satiety produced by an 
often-repeated dish, and the gratification 
caused by one long a stranger to the palate, 
are not meaningless, as many carelessly as- 
sume; but they are the incentives to a 
wholesome diversity of diet. It is a fact, 
established bj^ nmnerous experiments, that 
there is scarcely any one food, however good, 
which supplies in due proportions or right 
forms all the elements required for carrying 
on the vital processes in a normal manner : 
from whence it is to be inferred that frequent 
change of food is desirable to balance the sup- 
ply of all the elements. It is a further fact, 
well known to physiologists, that the enjoy- 
ment given by a much-liked food is a nervous 
stimulus, which, by increasing the action of 
the heart and so propelling the blood with in- 
creased vigor, aids in the subsequent diges- 
tion. And these truths are in harmony with 
the maxims of modern cattle-feeding, which 
dictate a rotation of diet. 

Not only, however, is periodic change of 
food very desirable; but, for the same rea- 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 233 

sons, it is very desirable that a mixture of 
food should be taken at each meal. The bet- 
ter balance of ingredients, and the greater 
nervous stimulation, are advantages which 
hold here as before. If facts are asked for, 
we may name /is one, the comparative ease 
with which the stomach disposes of a French 
dinner, enormous in quantity but extremely 
varied in material. Few will contend that an 
equal weight of one kind of food, however 
well cooked, could be digested with as much 
fa^cility. If any desire further facts, they 
may find them in every modern book on 
the management of animals. Animals thrive 
best when each meal is made up of several 
things. And indeed, among men of science 
the truth has been long ago established. The 
experiments of Goss and Stark ' ' afford the 
most decisive proof of the advantage, or 
rather the necessity, of a mixture of sub- 
stances, in order to produce the compound 
which is the best adapted for the action of the 
stomach."* 

Should any object, as probably many will, 
that a rotating dietary for children, and one 
which also requires a mixture of food at each 
meal, would entail too much trouble ; we re- 
ply, that no trouble is thought too great 
which conduces to the mental development of 
children, and that for their future welfare, 
good bodily development is equally important. 
Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange that 

* " Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology." 



234 EDUCATION. 

a trouble which is cheerfully taken in the fat- 
tening of pigs, should be thought too great in 
the rearing of children. 

One more paragraph, with the view of 
warning those who may propose to adopt the 
regimen indicated. The change must not be 
made suddenly ; for continued low-feeding so 
enfeebles the system, as to disable it from at 
once dealing with a high diet. Deficient nu- 
trition is itself a cause of dyspepsia. This is 
true even of animals. " When calves are fed 
with skimmed milk, or w^hey, or other poor 
food, they are liable to indigestion. " * Hence, 
tlierefore, where the energies are low, the 
transition to a generous diet must be gradual : 
each increment of strength gained, justifying 
a further increase of nutriment. Further, it 
should always be borne in mind that the con- 
centration of nutriment may be carried too 
far. A bulk sufficient to fill the stomach is 
one requisite of a proper meal ; and this req- 
uisite negatives a diet deficient in those waste 
matters which give adequate mass. Though 
the size of the digestive organs is less in the 
well-fed civilized races than in the ill-fed sav- 
age ones ; and, though their size may eventu- 
ally diminish still further ; yet, for the time 
being, the bulk of the ingesta must be deter- 
mined by the existing capacity. But, pay- 
ing due regard to these two qualifications our 
conclusions are — that the food of children 
should be highly nutritive ; that it should be 

* Morton's " Cyclopaedia of Agi-iculture." 



PUYSICAL EDUCATION. 235 

varied at each meal and at successive meals; 
and that it should be abundant. 

•With clothing as with food, the estab- 
lished tendency is towards an improper 
scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. 
There is a current theory, vaguely enter- 
tained, if not put into a definite formula, that 
the sensations are to be disregarded. They 
do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead 
us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced 
to its naked form. It is a grave error: we 
are much more beneficently constituted. It 
is not obedience to the sensations, but disobe- 
dience to them, which is the habitual cause 
of bodily evils. It is not the eating when 
hungry, but the eating in the absence of appe- 
tite, which is bad. It is not the drinking 
Avhen thirsty , but the continuing to drink when 
thirst has ceased, that is the vice. Harm re- 
sults not from breathing that fresh air which 
every healthy person enjoys; but from con- 
tinuing to breathe foul air, spite of the pro- 
test of the lungs. Harm results not from tak- 
ing that active exercise which, as every child 
shows us, nature strongly prompts ; but from 
a persistent disregard of nature's promptings. 
Not that mental activity which is spontaneous 
and enjoyable does the mischief; but that 
which is persevered in after a hot or aching 
head commands desistance. Not that bodily 
exertion which is pleasant or indifferent, does 
injury ; but that which is continued when ex- 
haustion forbids. It is true that, in those 



236 EDUCATION. 

who have long led unhealthy lives, the sensa- 
tions are not trustworthy guides. People 
who have for years been almost constantly in- 
doors, who have exercised their brains vejy 
much, and their bodies scarcely at all, who in 
eating have obeyed theii' clocks without con- 
sulting their stomachs, may very likely be 
misled by their vitiated feelings. But their 
abnormal state is itself the result of trans- 
gressing their feelings. Had they from child- 
hood up never disobeyed what we may term 
the physical conscience, it would not have 
been seared, but would have remained a faith- 
ful monitor. 

Among the sensations serving for our guid- 
ance are those of heat and cold ; and a cloth- 
ing for children which does not carefully 
consult these sensations is to be condemned. 
The common notion about ' ' hardening " is a 
grievous delusion. Children are not unfre- 
quently "hardened" out of the world; and 
those who survive, permanently suffer either 
in growth or constitution. "Their delicate 
appearance furnishes ample indication of the 
mischief thus produced, and their frequent 
attacks of illness might prove a warning even 
to unreflecting parents," says Dr. Combe. 
The reasoning on which this hardening theory 
rests is extremely superficial. Wealthy par- 
ents, seeing little peasant boys and girls 
playing about in the open air only half- 
clothed, and joining with this fact the general 
healthiness of laboring people, draw the un- 
warrantable conclusion that the healthiness 



PHYSICAL EDUCxLTIOm 237 

is the result of the exposure, and resolve to 
keep their own offspring scantily covered ! It 
is forgotten that these urchins who gambol 
upon village-greens are in many respects fa- 
vorably circumstanced — that their days are 
spent in almost perpetual play; that they are 
always breathing fresh air; and that their 
systems are not disturbed by over-taxed 
brains. For aught that appears to the con- 
trary, their good health may be maintained, 
not in consequence of, but in spite of, their 
deficient clothing. This alternative conclu- 
sion we believe to be the true one ; and that 
an inevitable detriment results from the need- 
less loss of animal heat to which they are 
subject. 

For when, the constitution being sound 
enough to bear it, exposure does produce 
hardness, it does so at the expense of growth. 
This truth is displayed alike in animals and 
in man. The Shetland pony bears greater 
inclemencies than the horses of the south, but 
is dwarfed. Highland sheep and cattle, liv- 
ing in a colder climate, are stunted in com- 
parison with English breeds. In both the 
arctic and antarctic regions the human race 
falls much below its ordinary height: the 
Laplander and Esquimaux are very short; 
and the Terra del Fuegians, who go naked 
in a cold latitude, are described by Darwin as 
?o stunted and hideous, that "one can hardly 
make one's self believe they are fellow-creat- 
ures." 

Science clearly explains this dwarfishness 



238 EDUCATION. 

produced by great abstraction of heat : show- 
ing that, food and other things being equal, 
it unavoidably results. For, as before pointed 
out, to make up for that cooling by radiation 
which the body is constantly undergoing, 
there must be a constant oxidation of certain 
matters which form part of the food. And in 
proportion as the thermal loss is great, must 
the quantity of these matters required for 
oxidation be great. But the power of the di- 
gestive organs is limited. Hence it follows, 
that when they have to prepare a large quan- 
tity of this material needful for maintaining 
the temperature, they can prepare but a small 
quantity of the material which goes to build 
up the frame. Excessive expenditure for 
fuel entails diminished means for other pur- 
poses : wherefore there necessarily results a 
body small in size, or inferior in texture, or 
both. 

Hence the great importance of clothing. 
As Liebig says: — "Our clothing is, in refer- 
ence to the temperature of the body, merely 
an equivalent for a certain amount of food." 
By diminishing the loss of heat, it diminishes 
the amount of fuel needful for maintaining 
the heat; and when the stomach has less to 
do in preparing fuel, it can do more in pre- 
paring other materials. This deduction is 
entirely confirmed by the experience of those 
who manage animals. Cold can be borne by 
animals only at an expense of fat, or muscle, 
or growth, as the case maybe. "If fatten- 
ing cattle are exposed to a low temperature. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 239 

either their progress must be retarded, or a 
great additional expenditure of food in- 
curred."* Mr. Apperley insists strongly 
that, to bring hunters into good condition, it 
is necessary that the stable should be kept 
warm. And among those who rear racers, it 
is an established doctrine that exposure is to 
be avoided. 

The scientific truth thus illustrated by eth- 
nology, and recognized by agriculturists and 
sportsmen, applies with double force to chil- 
dren. In proportion to their smallness and 
the rapidity of their growth is the injury from 
cold great. In France, new-born infants 
often die in winter from being carried to the 
office of the maire for registration. "M. 
Quetelet has pointed out, that in Belgium two 
infants die in January for one that dies in 
July." And in Russia the infant mortality is 
something enormous. Even when near ma- 
turity, the undeveloped frame is compara- 
tively unable to bear exposure : as witness the 
quickness with which young soldiers succumb 
in a trying campaign. The rationale is obvi- 
ous. We have already adverted to the fact 
that, in consequence of the varying relation 
between surface and bulk, a child loses a rela- 
tively larger amount of heat than an adult ; 
and here we must point out that the disad- 
vantage under which the child thus labors is 
very great. Lehmann says: — "If the car- 
bonic acid excreted by children or young ani- 

* Morton's " Cyclopaedia of Agriculture." 



240 EDUCATION. 

mals is calculated for an equal bodily weight, 
it results that children produce nearly twice 
as much acid as adults. " Now the quantity 
of carbonic acid given off varies with tolera- 
ble accuracy as the quantity of heat pro- 
duced. And thus we see that in children the 
system, even when not placed at a disadvant- 
age, is called upon to provide nearly double 
the proportion of material for generating 
heat. 

See, then, the extreme folly of clothing the 
young scantilj^ What father, full-grown 
though he is, losing heat less rapidly as he 
does, and having no physiological necessity 
but to supply the waste of each day — what 
father, we ask, would think it salutary to go 
about with bare legs, bare arms, and bare 
neck? Yet this tax upon the system, from 
which he would shrink, he inflicts upon his 
little ones, who are so much less able to bear 
it ! or, if he does not inflict it, sees it inflicted 
without protest. Let him remember that 
every ounce of nutriment needlessly expended 
for the maintenance of temperature, is so much 
deducted from the nutriment going to build 
up the frame and maintain the energies ; and 
that even when colds, congestions, or other 
consequent disorders are escaped, diminished 
growth or less perfect structure is inevitable. 
"The rule is, therefore, not to dress in an 
invariable way in all cases, but to put on 
clothing in kind and quantity sufficient in the 
individual case to protect the body effectually 
from an abiding sensation of cold, however 



PHTSTCAL EDUCATION. 241 

slight, ^^ This rule, the importance of which 
Dr. Combe indicat&s by the itahcs, is one in 
which men of science and practitioners agree. 
We ha,ve met with none competent to form a 
judgment on the matter, who do not strongly 
condemn the exposure of children's limbs. 
If there is one point above others in wliich 
"pestilent custom" should be ignored, it is 
this. 

Lamentable, indeed, is it to see mothers 
seriously damaging the constitutions of their 
children out of compliance with an uTational 
fashion. It is bad enough that they should 
themselves conform to every folly wliich our 
Gallic neighbors please to initiate; but that 
they should clothe their children in any 
mountebank dress which Le petit Coiirrier 
des Dames indicates, regardless of its insuffi- 
ciency and unfitness, is monstrous. Discom- 
fort more or less great, is inflicted; frequent 
disorders are entailed ; growth is checked or 
stamina undermined; premature death not 
uncommonly caused; and all because it is 
thought needful to make froclis of a size and 
material dictated by French cai^rice. Not 
only is it that for the sake of cx)nformity, 
mothers thus punish and injure their little 
ones by scantiness of covering; but it is that 
from an allied motive they impose a style of 
dress which forbids healthful activity. To 
please the eye, colors and fabrics are chosen 
totally unfit to bear that rough usage which 
unrestrained play involves; and then to pre- 
vent damage the unrestrained play is inter- 
16 



242 EDUCATION. 

dieted. "Get up this moment: you will soil 
your clean frock," is the mandate issued to 
some urchin creeping about on the floor. 
" Come back: you will dirty your stockings," 
calls out the governess to one of her charges, 
who has left the footpath to scramble up a 
bank. Thus is the evil doubled. That they 
may come up to their mamma's standard of 
prettiness, and be admired by her visitors, 
children must have habiliments deficient in 
quantity and imfit in texture ; and that these 
easily-damaged habiliments may be kept 
clean and uninjured, the restless activity, so 
natural and needful for the young, is more or 
less restrained. The exercise which becomes 
doubly requisite when the clothing is insuffi- 
cient, is cut short, lest it should deface the 
clothing. Would that the terrible cruelty of 
this system could be seen by those who main- 
tain it. We do not hesitate to say that, through 
enfeebled health, defective energies, and con- 
sequent non-success in life, thousands are an- 
nually doomed to unhappiness by this unscru- 
pulous regard for appearances: even when 
they are not, by early death, literally sacri- 
ficed to the Moloch of maternal vanity. We 
are reluctant to counsel strong measures, but 
really the evils are so great as to justify, or 
even to demand, a peremptory interference 
on the part of fathers. 

Our conclusions are, then— that, while the 
clothing of children should never be in such 
excess as to create oppressive warmth, it 
should always be sufficient to prevent any 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 243 

general feeling of cold ; * that, instead of the 
flimsy cotton, linen, or mixed fabrics com- 
monly used, it should be made of some good 
non-conductor, such as coarse woollen cloth; 
that it should be so strong as to receive little 
damage from the hard wear and tear which 
childish sports will give it ; and that its col- 
ors should be such as will not soon suffer from 
use and exposure. 

To the importance of bodily exercise most 
people are in some degree awake. Perhaps 
less needs saying on this requisite of physical 
education than on most others : at any rate, 
in so far as boys are concerned. Public 
schools and private schools alike furnish tol- 
erably adequate playgrounds; and there is 
usually a fair share of time for out-of-door 
games, and a recognition of them as needful. 
In this, if in no other direction, it seems ad- 
mitted that the natural promptings of boyish 
instinct may advantageously be followed; 
and, indeed, in the modern practice of break- 
ing the prolonged morning and afternoon's 
lessons by a few minutes' open-air recreation, 
we see an increasing tendency to conform 



* It is needful to remark that children whose legs and arms 
have been from the beginning habitually without covering, 
cease to be conscious that the exposed surfaces are cold ; just 
as by use we have all ceased to be conscious that our faces 
are cold, even when out of doors. But though in such chil- 
dren the sensations no longer protest, it does not follow that 
the«ystem escapes injury ; any more than it follows that the 
Fuegian is imdamaged by exposm'e, because he bears with 
indifference the melting of the falling snow on his naked body. 



244 EDUCATION 

school regulations to the bodily sensations of 
the pupils. Here, then, little needs to be said 
in the way of expostulation or suggestion. 

But we have been obliged to qualify this ad- 
mission by inserting the clause "in so far 
as boys are concerned." Unfortunately, the 
fact is quite otherwise in the case of girls. 
It chances, somewhat strangely, that we have 
daily opportunity of drawing a comparison. 
We have both a boy's and a girl's school with- 
in view ; and the contrast between them is re- 
markable. In the one case, nearly the whole 
of a large garden is turned into an open, 
gravelled space, affording ample scope for 
games, and supplied with poles and horizontal 
bars for gymnastic exercises. Every day be- 
fore breakfast, again towards eleven o'clock, 
again at midday, again in the afternoon, and 
once more after school is over the neighbor- 
hood is awakened by a chorus of shouts and 
laughter as the boys rush out to play ; and 
for as long as they remain, both eyes and ears 
give proof that they are absorbed in that en- 
joyable activity which makes the pulse 
bound and ensures the healthful activity of 
every organ. How unlike is the picture of- 
fered by the "Establishment for Young La- 
dies"! Until the fact was pointed out, we 
actually did not know that we had a girls' 
school as close to us as the school for boys. 
The garden, equally large with the other, 
affords no sign whatever of any provision 
for juvenile recreation; but is entirely laid 
out with prim grassplots, gravel-walks, 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 245 

slirubs, and flowers, after the usual suburban 
style. During five months we have not once 
had our attention drawn to the premises by 
a shout or a laugh. Occasionally girls may 
be observed sauntering along the paths with 
their lesson books in their hands, or else walk- 
ing arm-in-arm. Once, indeed, we saw one 
chase another round the garden; but, with 
this exception, nothing like vigorous exertion 
has been visible. 

Why this astonishing difference? Is it that 
the constitution of a girl differs so entirely 
from that of a boy as not to need these act- 
ive exercises? Is it that a girl has none of 
the promptings to vociferous play by which 
boys are impelled? Or is it that, while in 
boys these promptings are to be regarded as 
securing that bodily activity without which 
there cannot be adequate development, to 
their sisters nature has given them for no 
purpose whatever—unless it be for the vex- 
ation of schoolmistresses? Perhaps, how- 
ever, we mistake the aim of those who train 
the gentler sex. We have a vague suspicion 
that to produce a robust physique is thought 
undesirable; that rude health and abundant 
vigor are considered somewhat plebeian; 
that a certain delicacy, a strength not compe- 
tent to more than a mile or two's walk, an 
appetite fastidious and easily satisfied, joined 
with that timidity which commonly accom- 
panies feebleness are held more lady-like. We 
do not expect that any would distinctly avow 
this; but we fancy the governess-mind is 



246 EDUCATION. 

haunted by an ideal young lady bearing not a 
little resemblance to this type. If so, it must 
be admitted that the established system is 
admirably calculated to realize this ideal. 
But to suppose that such is the ideal of the 
opposite sex is a profound mistake. That 
men are not commonly drawn towards mascu- 
line women, is doubtless true. That such 
relative weakness as calls for the protection 
of superior strength is an element of attrac- 
tion, we quite admit. But the difference to 
which the feelings thus respond is the natural, 
pre-established difference, which will assert 
itself without artificial appliances. And 
when, by artificial appliances, the degree of 
this difference is increased, it becomes an ele- 
ment of repulsion rather than attraction. 

" Then girls should be allowed to run wild 
— to become as rude as boys, and grow up 
into romps and hoydens ! " exclaims some de- 
fender of the proprieties. This, we presume, 
is the ever-present dread of schoolmistresses. 
It appears, on inquiry, that at "Establish- 
ments for Young Ladies " noisy play like that 
daily indulged in by boys, is a punishable 
offence; and it is to be inferred that this 
noisy play is forbidden, lest unlady-like habits 
should be formed. The fear is quite ground- 
less, however. For if the sportive activity 
allowed to boys does not prevent them from 
growing up into gentlemen; why should a like 
sportive activity allowed to girls prevent 
them from growing up into ladies? Rough as 
may have been their accustomed play -ground 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 247 

frolics, youths who have left school do not 
indulge in leapfrog in the street, or marbles 
in the drawing-room. Abandoning their 
jackets, they abandon at the same time boy- 
ish games ; and display an anxiety — often a 
ludicrous anxiety — to avoid whatever is not 
manly. If now, on arriving at the due age, 
this feeling of masculine dignity puts so effi- 
cient a restraint on the romping sports of boy- 
hood, will not the feeling of feminine 'mod- 
esty, gi-adually strengthening as maturity is 
approached, but an efficient restraint on the 
like sports of girlhood? Have not women 
even a greater regard for appearances than 
men? and will there not consequently arise 
in them even a stronger check to whatever is 
rough or boisterous ? How absurd is the 
supposition that the womanly instincts would 
not assert themselves but for the rigorous dis- 
cipline of schoolmistresses ! 

In this, as in other cases, to remedy the 
evils of one artificiality, another artificiality 
has been introduced. The natural spontane- 
ous exercise having been forbidden, and the 
bad consequences of no exercise having become 
conspicuous, there has been adopted a system 
of factitious exercise — gymnastics. That this 
is better than nothing we admit ; but that it 
is an adequate substitute for play we deny. 
The defects are both positive and negative. 
In the fii-st place, these formal, muscular 
motions, necessarily much less varied than 
those accompanying juvenile sports, do not 
secure so equable a distribution of action to 



24S EDUCATION. 

all parts of the body ; whence it results that 
the exertion, falling on special parts, produces 
fatigue sooner than it would else have done : 
add to which, that, if constantly repeated, 
this exertion of special parts leads to a dispro- 
portionate development. Again, the quantity 
of exercise thus taken will be deficient, not 
only in consequence of uneven distribution, 
but it will be further deficient in consequence 
of lack of interest. Even when not made 
repulsive, as they sometimes are, by assuming 
the shape of appointed lessons, these monot- 
onous movements are sure to become weari- 
some, from the absence of amusement. Com- 
petition, it is true, serves as a stimulus; but 
it is not a lasting stimulus, like that enjoy- 
ment which accompanies varied play. Not 
only, however, are gymnastics inferior in 
respect of the quantity of muscular exertion 
which they secure; they are still more in- 
ferior in respect of the quality. This com- 
parative want of enjoyment to which we 
have just referred as a cause of early desist- 
ance from artificial exercises, is also a cause 
of inferiority in the effects they produce on 
the system. The common assumption that so 
long as the amount of bodily action is the 
same, it matters not whether it be pleasurable 
or otherwise, is a grave mistake. An agree- 
able mental excitement has a highly invigor- 
ating influence. See the effect produced upon 
an invalid by good news, or by the visit of an 
old friend. Mark how careful medical men 
are to recommend lively society to debilitated 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 249 

patients. Eemember how beneficial to the 
health is the gratification produced by change 
of scene. The truth is that happiness is the 
most powerful of tonics. By accelerating 
the circulation of the blood, it facilitates 
the performance of every function; and so 
tends alike to increase health when it exists, 
and to restore it when it has been lost. 
Hence the essential superiority of play to 
gymnastics. The extreme interest felt by 
children in their games, and the riotous glee 
with which they carry on their rougher 
frolics, are of as much im^^ortance as the 
accompanying exertion. And as not supply- 
ing these mental stimuli, gymnastics must be 
fundamentally defective. 

Granting then, as we do, that formal exer- 
cises of the limbs are better than nothing — 
granting, further, that they may be used 
with advantage as supplementary aids; we 
yet contend that such formal exercises can 
never supply the place of the exercises 
prompted by nature. For girls, as well as 
boys, the sportive activities to which the in- 
stincts impel, are essential to bodily welfare. 
Whoever forbids them, forbids the divinely- 
appointed means to physical development. 

A topic still remains — one perhaps more ur- 
gently demanding consideration than any of 
the foregoing. It is asserted by not a few, 
that among the educated classes the younger 
adults and those who are verging upon matur- 
ity are, on the average, neither so well grown 



250 EDUCATION. 

nor so strong as their seniors. When first 
we heard this assertion, we were inchned to 
disregard it as one of the many manifestations 
of the old tendency to exalt the past at the 
expense of the present. Calling to mind the 
facts that, as measured by ancient armor, 
modern men are proved to be larger than an- 
cient men, and that the tables of mortality 
show no diminution, but rather an increase 
in the duration of life, we paid little attention 
to what seemed a groundless belief. Detailed 
observation, however, has greatly shaken 
our opinion. Omitting from the comparison 
the laboring classes, we have noticed a major- 
ity of cases in which the children do not 
reach the stature of their parents; and in 
massiveness, making due allowance for dif- 
ference of age, there seems a like inferiority. 
In health, the contrast appears still greater. 
Men of past generations, living riotously as 
they did, could bear much more than men of 
the present generation, who live soberly, can 
bear. Though they drank hard, kept irregu- 
lar hours, were regardless of fresh air, and 
thought little of cleanliness, our recent ances- 
tors were capable of prolonged application 
without injury, even to a ripe old age: wit- 
ness the annals of the bench and the bar. 
Yet we who think much about our bodily 
welfare; who eat with moderation, and do 
not drink to excess; who attend to ventila- 
tion, and use frequent ablutions; who make 
annual excursions, and have the benefit of 
greater medical knowledge ; — we are continu- 



PUYSICAL EDUCATION. 251 

ally breaking down under our work. Paying 
considerable attention to the laws of health, 
we seem to be weaker than our grandfathers 
who, in many respects, defied the laws of 
health. And, ^judging from the appearance 
and frequent ailments of the rising genera- 
tion, they are likely to be even less robust 
than ourselves. 

What is the meaning of this? Is it that 
past over-feeding, alike of adults and juve- 
niles, was less injurious than the under-feed- 
ing to which we have adverted as now so gen- 
eral? Is it that the deficient clothing which 
this delusive hardening theory has encour- 
aged, is to blame? Is it that the greater or 
less discouragement of juvenile sports, in 
deference to a false refinement, is the cause? 
From our reasonings it may be inferred that 
each of these has probably had a share in 
producing the evil. But there has been yet 
another detrimental influence at work, per- 
haps more potent than any of the others : we 
mean — excess of mental application. 

On old and young, the pressure of modern 
life puts a still-increasing strain. In all busi- 
nesses and professions, intenser competition 
taxes the energies and abilities of every 
adult; and, with the view of better fitting the 
young to hold their place under this intenser 
competition, they are subject to a more severe 
discipline than heretofore. The damage is 
thus doubled. Fathers, who find not only 
that they are run hard by their multiplying 
competitors, but that, while laboring under 



252 EDUCATION. 

this disadvantage, they have to maintain a 
more expensive style of Hving, are all the^^ 
year round obliged to work early and late, 
taking little exercise and getting but short 
holidays. The constitutions, shaken by this 
long continued over-application, they be- 
queath to their children. And then these 
comparatively feeble children, predisposed as 
they are to break down even under an ordi- 
nary strain upon their energies, are required 
to go through a curriculum much more ex- 
tended than that prescribed for the unen- 
feebled children of past generations. 

That disastrous consequences must result 
from this cumulative transgression might be 
predicted with certainty; and that they do 
result, every observant person knows. Gro 
where you will, and before long there come 
under your notice cases of children, or 
youths, of either sex, more or less injured by 
undue study. Here, to recover from a state 
of debility thus produced, a year's rustication 
has been found necessary. There you find a 
chronic congestion of the brain, that has al- 
ready lasted many months, and threatens to 
last much longer. Now you hear of a fever 
that resulted from the over-excitement in 
some way brought on at school. And, again, 
the instance is that of a youth who has already 
had once to desist from his studies, and who, 
since he has returned to them, is frequently 
taken out of his class in a fainting fit. We 
state facts— facts that have not been sought 
for, but have been thrust upon our observa- 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 253 

tion during the last two years ; and that, too, 
within a very limited range. Nor have we by 
any means exhausted the list. Quite recently 
we had the opportunity of marking how the 
evil becomes hereditary : the case being that 
of a lady of robust parentage, whose system, 
was so injured by the regime of a Scotch 
boarding-school, where she was under-fed and 
over-worked, that she invariably suffers from 
vertigo on rising in the morning ; and whose 
children, inheriting this enfeebled brain, are 
several of them unable to bear even a moder- 
ate amount of study without headache or gid- 
diness, At the present time we have daily 
under our eyes, a young lady whose system 
has been damaged for life by the college-course 
through Avhich she has passed. Taxed as she 
was to such an extent that she had no energy 
left for exercise, she is, now that she has fin- 
ished her education, a constant complainant. 
Appetite small and very capricious, mostly 
refusing meat; extremities perpetually cold, 
even when the weather is warm ; a feebleness 
which forbids anything but the slowest walk- 
ing, and that only for a short time ; palpita- 
tion on going up stairs ; greatly impaired vis- 
ion — these, joined with checked growth and 
lax tissue, are among the results entailed. 
And to her case we may add that of her 
friend and fellow-student; who is similarly 
weak ; who is liable to faint even under the 
excitement of a quiet party of friends; and 
who has at length been obliged by her medi- 
cal attendant to desist from study entirely. 



254 EDUCATION. 

If injuries so conspicuous are thus frequent, 
how very general must be the smaller and in- 
conspicuous injuries. To one case where pos- 
itive illness is directly traceable to over-appli- 
cation, there are probably at least half-a-doz- 
en cases where the evil is unobtrusive and 
slowly accumulating — cases where there is 
frequent derangement of the functions, attrib- 
uted to this or that special cause, or to con- 
stitutional delicacy ; cases where there is re- 
tardation and premature arrest of bodily 
growth; cases where a latent tendency to 
consumption is brought out and established ; 
cases where a predisposition is given to that 
now common cerebi-al disorder brought on by 
the hard work of adult life. How commonly 
constitutions are thus undermined, will be 
clear to all who after noting the frequent ail- 
ments of hard- worked professional and mer- 
cantile men, will reflect on the disastrous ef- 
fects which undue application must produce 
upon the undeveloped systems of the young. 
The young are competent to bear neither as 
much hardship, nor as much physical exer- 
tion, nor as much meiital exertion, as the full 
grown. Judge, then, if the full groAvn so 
manifestly suffer from the excessive mental 
exertion required of them, how great must be 
the damage which a mental exertion, often 
equally excessive, inflicts upon the young ! 

Indeed, when we examine the merciless 
school drill to which many children are sub- 
jected, the wonder is, not that it does great 
injury, but that it can be borne at all. Take 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 255 

the instance given by Sir John Forbes from 
personal knowledge; and which he asserts, 
after much inquiry, to be an average sam- 
ple of the middle-class girl's-school system 
throughout England. Omitting the detailed 
divisions of time, we quote the summary of 
the twenty-four hours. 

In bed 9 hours ^the younger 10) 

In school, at their studies and 

tasks 9 " 

In school, or in the house, the 

older at optional studies or 

the work, younger at play . 3^ " (the younger 2J) 

At meals U " 

Exercise in the open air, in 

the shape of a formal walk, 

often with lesson-books in 

hand, and even this only 

when the weather is fine at 

the appointed time . . 1 " 

24 



And what are the results of this '* astound- 
ing regimen," as Sir John Forbes terms it? 
Of course feebleness, pallor, want of spir- 
its, general ill-health. But he describes some- 
thing more. This utter disregard of physical 
welfare, out of extreme anxiety to cultivate 
the mind — this prolonged exercise of the 
brain and deficient exercise of the limbs, — he 
found to be habitually followed, not only by 
disordered functions but by malformation. 
He says: — "We lately visited, in a large 
town, a boarding-school containing forty girls ; 
and we learnt, on close and accurate inquiry, 



256 EDUCATION, 

that there was not one of the girls who had 
been at the school two years (and the majori- 
ty had been as long) that was not more or less 
crooked / " * 

It may be that since 1833, when this was 
written, some improvement has taken place. 
We hope it has. But that the system is still 
common — nay, that it is in some cases carried 
even to a greater extreme than ever ; we can 
personally testify. We recently went over a 
training college for young men : one of those 
instituted of late years for the purpose of sup- 
plying schools with well-disciplined teachers. 
Here under official supervision, where some- 
thing better than the judgment of private 
schoolmistresses might have been looked for, 
we found the daily routine to as follows : — 

At 6 o'clock the students are called, 

" 7 to 8 studies, 

" 8 to 9 scripture reading, prayers, and breakfast, 

" 9 to 12 studies, 

" 12 to 1} leisui'e, nominally devoted to walk or other ex- 
ercise, but often spent in study, 

" IJ to 3 dinner, the meal commonly occupying twenty 
minutes, 

" 2 to 5 studies, 

" 5 to 6 tea and relaxation, 

" 6 to 8^ studies, 

" Si to 9i private studies in preparing lessons for the next 
day, 

" 10 to bed. 

Thus, out of the twenty-four hours, eight 
are devoted to sleep ; four and a quarter are 
occupied in dressing, prayers, meals, and the 
brief periods of rest accompanying them ; ten 

* " Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine," vol. i. pp. 697, 698. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 257 

and a half are given to study ; and one and a 
quarter to exercise, which is optional ,and 
often avoided. Not only, however, is it that 
the ten and a half hours of recognized study 
are frequently increased to eleven and a half 
by devoting to books the time set apart for 
exercise; but some of the students who are 
not quick in learning, get up at four o'clock 
in the morning to prepare their lessons ; and 
are actually encouraged by their teachers to 
do this ! The course to be passed through in 
a given time is so extensive; the teachers, 
whose credit is at stake in getting their pupils 
well through the examinations, are so urgent ; 
and the difficulty of satisfying the require- 
ments is so great ; that pupils are not uncom- 
monly induced to spend twelve and thirteen 
hours a day in mental labor ! 

It needs no prophet to see that the bodily 
injury inflicted must be great. As we were 
told by one of the inmates, those who arrive 
with fresh complexions quickly become 
blanched. Illness is frequent: there are al- 
ways some on the sick-list. Failure of appe- 
tite and indigestion are very common. Diar- 
rhoea is a prevalent disorder: not uncom- 
monly a third of the whole number of stu- 
dents suffering under it at the same time. 
Headache is generally complained of ; and by 
some is borne almost daily for months. 
While a certain percentage break down en- 
tirely and go away. 

That this should be the regimen of what is 
in some sort a model institution, established 
17 



258 \ EDUCATION. 

and superintended by the embodied enlight- 
enment of the age, is a starthng fact. Tliat 
the severe examinations, joined with the 
short period assigned for preparation, should 
practically compel recourse to a system which 
inevitably undermines the health of all who 
pass through it, is proof, if not of cruelty, 
then of woful ignorance. 

Doubtless the case is in a great degree ex- 
ceptional — perhaps to be paralleled only hi 
other institutions of the same class. But that 
cases so extreme should exist at all, indicates 
pretty clearly how great is the extent to 
which the minds of the rising generation are 
overtasked. Expressing as they do the ideas 
of the educated community, these training 
colleges, even in the absence of all other evi- 
dence, would conclusively imply a prevailing 
tendency to an unduly urgent system of cult- 
ure. 

It seems strange that there should be so lit- 
tle consciousness of the dangers of over-edu- 
cation during youth, when there is so gen- 
eral a consciousness of the dangers of over- 
education during childhood. Most parents 
are more or less aware of the evil conse- 
quences that follow infant precocity. In 
every society may be heard reprobation of 
those who too early stimulate the minds of 
their little ones. And the dread of this early 
stimulation is great in proportion as there is 
adequate knowledge of the effects : witness the 
implied opinion of one of our most distin- 
guished professors of physiology, who told us 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 257 

and a half are given to study; and one and a 
quarter to exercise, which is optional and 
often avoided. Not only, however, is it that 
the ten and a half hours of recognized study 
are frequently increased to eleven and a half 
by devoting to books the time set apart for 
exercise; but some of the students who are 
not quick in learning, get up at four o'clock 
in the morning to prepare their lessons ; and 
are actually encouraged by their teachers to 
• do this ! The course to be passed through in 
a given time is so extensive; the teachers, 
whose credit is at stake in getting their pupils 
well through the examinations, are so urgent ; 
and the difficulty of satisfying the require- 
ments is so great ; that pupils are not uncom- 
monly induced to spend twelve and thirteen 
hours a day in mental labor ! 

It needs no prophet to see that the bodily 
injury inflicted must be great. As we were 
told by one of the inmates, those who arrive 
with fresh complexions quickly become 
blanched. Illness is frequent: there are al- 
ways some on the sick-list. Failure of appe- 
tite and indigestion are very common. Diar- 
rhoea is a prevalent disorder: not uncom- 
monly a third of the whole number of stu- 
dents suffering under it at the same tune. 
Headache is generally complained of; and by 
some is borne almost daily for months. 
While a certain percentage break down en- 
tirely and go away. 

That this should be the regimen of what is 
in some sort a model institution, established 
17 



258 EDUCATION. 

and superintended by the embodied enlight- 
enment of the age, is a startling fact. That 
the severe examinations, joined with the 
short period assigned for preparation, should 
practically compel recourse to a system which 
inevitably undermines the health of all who 
pass through it, is proof, if not of cruelty, 
then of woful ignorance. 

Doubtless the case is in a great degree ex- 
ceptional—perhaps to be paralleled only In 
other institutions of the same class. But that 
cases so extreme should exist at all, indicates 
pretty clearly how great is the extent to 
which the minds of the rising generation are 
overtasked. Expressing as they do the ideas 
of the educated community, these training 
colleges, even in the absence of all other evi- 
dence, would conclusively imply a prevailing 
tendency to an unduly urgent system of cult- 
ure. 

It seems strange that there should be so lit- 
tle consciousness of the dangers of over-edu- 
cation during youth, when there is so gen- 
eral a consciousness of the dangers of over- 
education during childhood. Most parents 
are more or less aware of the evil conse- 
quences that follow infant precocity. In 
every society may be heard reprobation of 
those who too early stimulate the minds of 
their little ones. And the dread of this early 
stimulation is great in proportion as there is 
adequate knowledge of the effects : witness the 
implied opinion of one of our most distin- 
guished professors of physiology, who told us 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 263 

scarcely at all more complex when the cater- 
pillar is full-grown than when it is small. In 
the chrysalis the bulk does not increase ; on 
the contrary, weight is lost during this stage 
of the creature's life ; but the elaboration of a 
more complex structure goes on with great 
activity. The antagonism, here so clear, is 
less traceable in higher creatures, because the 
two processes are carried on together. But 
we see it pretty well illustrated among our- 
selves by contrasting the sexes. A girl de- 
velops in body and mind rapidly, and ceases 
to grow comparatively early. A boy's bodily 
and mental development is slower, and his 
growth greater. At the age when the one is 
mature, finished, and having all faculties in 
full play, the other, whose vital energies 
have been more directed towards increase of 
size, is relatively incomplete in structure; 
and shows it in a comparative awkwardness, 
bodily and mental. Now this law is true not 
only of the organism as a whole, but of each 
separate part. The abnormally rapid ad- 
vance of any part in respect of structure in- 
volves premature arrest of its growth ; and 
this happens with the organ of the mind as 
certainly as with any other organ. The brain, 
which during early years is relatively large 
in mass but imperfect in structure will, if 
required to perform its functions with un- 
due activity, undergo a structural advance 
greater than is appropriate to the age ; but 
the ultimate effect will be a falling short of 
the size and power that would else have been 



264 EDUCATION. 

attained. And this is a part cause — proba- 
bly the chief cause — why precocious children, 
and youths who up to a certain time were 
carrying all before them, so often stop short 
and disappoint the high hopes of their par- 
ents. 

But these results of over-education, disas- 
trous as they are, are perhaps less disastrous 
than the results produced upon the health — 
the undermined constitution, the enfeebled 
energies, the morbid feelings. Recent dis- 
coveries in physiology have shown how im- 
mense is the influence of the brain over the 
functions of the body. The digestion of the 
food, the circulation of the blood, and through 
these all other organic processes, are pro- 
foundly affected by cerebral excitement. 
Whoever has seen repeated, as we have, the 
experiment first performed by Weber, show- 
ing the consequence of irritating the vagus 
nerve which connects the brain with the vis- 
cera — whoever has seen the action of the 
heart suddenly arrested by the irritation of 
this nerve ; slowly recommencing when the 
irritation is suspended; and again arrested 
the moment it is renewed ; will have a vivid 
conception of the depressing influence which 
an over-wrought brain exercises on the body. 
The effects thus physiologically explained, 
are indeed exemplified in ordmary experience. 
There is no one but has felt the palpitation 
accompanying hope, fear, anger, joy — no one 
but has observed how labored becomes the 
action of the heart when these feelings are 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 263 

scarcely at all more complex when the cater- 
pillar is full-grown than when it is small. In 
the chrysalis the bulk does not increase ; on 
the contrary, weight is lost during this stage 
of the creature's life ; but the elaboration of a 
more complex structure goes on with great 
activity. The antagonism, here so clear, is 
less traceable in higher creatures, because the 
two processes are carried on together. But 
we see it pretty well illustrated among our- 
selves by contrasting the sexes. A^ girl de- 
velops in body and mind rapidly, and ceases 
to grow comparatively early. A boy's bodily 
and mental development is slower, and his 
growth greater. At the age when the one is 
mature, finished, and having all faculties in 
full play, the other, whose vital energies 
have been more directed towards increase of 
size, is relatively incomplete in structure; 
and shows it in a comparative awkwardness, 
bodily and mental. Now this law is true not 
only of the organism as a whole, but of each 
separate part. The abnonnally rapid ad- 
vance of any part in respect of structure in- 
volves premature arrest of its growth ; and 
this happens with the organ of the mind as 
certainly as with any other organ. The brain, 
which during early years is relatively large 
.in mass but imperfect in structure will, if 
required to perform its functions with un- 
due activity, undergo a structural advance 
greater than is appropriate to the age ; but 
the ultimate effect will he a falling short of 
the size and power that would else have been 



264 EDUCATION. 

attained. And this is a part cause — proba- 
bly the chief cause — why precocious children, 
and youths who up to a certain time were 
carrying all before them, so often stop short 
and disappoint the high hopes of their par- 
ents. 

But these results of over-education, disas- 
trous as they are, are perhaps less disastrous 
than the results produced upon the health — 
the undermined constitution, the enfeebled 
energies, the morbid feelings. Recent dis- 
coveries in physiology have shown how im- 
mense is the influence of the brain over the 
functions of the body. The digestion of the 
food, the circulation of the blood, and through 
these all other organic processes, are pro- 
foundly affected by cerebral excitement. 
Whoever has seen repeated, as we have, the 
experiment first performed by Weber, show- 
ing the consequence of irritating the vagus 
nerve which connects the brain with the vis- 
cera — ^whoever has seen the action of the 
heart suddenly arrested by the irritation of 
this nerve ; slowly recommencing when the 
irritation is suspended; and again arrested 
the moment it is renewed ; will have a vivid 
conception of the depressing influence which 
an over -wrought brain exercises on the body. 
The effects thus physiologically explained, 
are indeed exemplified in ordinary experience. 
There is no one but has felt the palpitation 
accompanying hope, fear, anger, joy — no one 
but has observed how labored becomes the 
action of the heart when these feelings are 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 2G5 

very vioient. And though there are many 
who have never themselves suffered that ex- 
treme emotional excitement which is follow- 
ed by arrest of the heart's action and fainting ; 
yet every one knows them to be cause and 
effect. It is a familiar fact, too, that disturb- 
ance of the stomach is entailed by mental 
excitement exceeding a certain intensity. 
Loss of appetite is a common result alike of 
very pleasurable and very painful states of 
mind. When the event producing a pleas- 
urable or painful state of mind occurs shortly 
after a meal, it not unfrequently happens 
either that the stomach rejects what has 
been eaten, or digests it with great difficulty 
and under prolonged protest. And as every 
one who taxes his brain much can testify, 
even purely intellectual action will, when ex- 
cessive, produce analogous effects. Now the 
relation between brain and body which is so 
manifest in these extreme cases, holds equal- 
ly in ordinary, less-marked cases. Just as 
these violent but temporary csrebral excite- 
ments produce violent but temporary disturb- 
ances of the viscera; so do the less violent 
but chronic cerebral excitements, produce 
less violent but chronic visceral disturbances. 
This is not simply an inference — it is a truth 
to which every medical man can bear wit- 
ness ; and it is one to which a long and sad 
experience enables us to give personal testi- 
mony. Various degrees and forms of bodily 
derangement, often taking years of enforced 
idleness to set partially right, result from 



266 EDUCATION. 

this prolonged over-exertion of mind. Some- 
times the heart is chiefly affected : habitual 
palpitations; a pulse much enfeebled; and 
very generally a diminution in the number 
of beats from seventy-two to sixty, or even 
fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous disorder 
is of the stomach ; a dyspepsia which makes 
life a burden, and is amenable to no remedy 
but time. In many cases both heart and 
stomach are implicated. Mostly the sleep is 
short and broken. And very generally there 
is more or less mental depression. 

Consider, then, how great must be the dam- 
age inflicted by undue mental excitement on 
children and youths. More or less of this 
constitutional disturbance will inevitably fol- 
low an exertion of brain beyond that which 
nature had provided for ; and when not so ex- 
cessive as to produce absolute illness, is sure 
to entafl a slowly accumulating degeneracy 
of physique. With a small and fastidious 
appetite, an imperfect digestion, and an en- 
feebled circulation, how can the developing 
body flourish? The due performance of every 
vital process depends on the adequate supply 
of good blood. Without enough good blood, 
no gland can secrete properly, no viscus can 
fully discharge its office. Without enough 
good blood, no nerve, muscle, membrane, or 
other tissue can be efficiently repaired. With- 
out enough good blood, growth will neither be 
sound nor sufiicient. Judge then, how bad 
must be the consequences when to a growing 
body the weakened stomach supplies blood 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 265 

very vioient. And though there are many 
who have never themselves suffered that ex- 
treme emotional excitement which is follow- 
ed by arrest of the heart's action and fainting ; 
yet every one knows them to be cause and 
effect. It is a familiar fact, too, that disturb- 
ance of the stomach is entailed by mental 
excitement exceeding a certain intensity. 
Loss of appetite is a common result alike of 
very pleasurable and very painful states of 
mind. When the event producing a pleas- 
urable or painful state of mind occurs shortly 
after a meal, it not unfrequently happens 
either that the stomach rejects what has 
been eaten, or digests it with great difficulty 
and under prolonged protest. And as every 
one who taxes his brain much can testify, 
even purely intellectual action will, when ex- 
cessive, produce analogous effects. Now the 
relation between brain and body which is so 
manifest in these extreme cases, holds equal- 
ly in ordinary, less-marked cases. Just as 
these violent but temporary cerebral excite- 
ments produce violent but temporary disturb- 
ances of the viscera; so do the less violent 
but chronic cerebral excitements, produce 
less violent but chronic visceral disturbances. 
This is not simply an inference — it is a truth 
to which every medical man can bear wit- 
ness ; and it is one to which a long and sad 
experience enables us to give personal testi- 
mony. Various degrees and forms of bodily 
derangement, often taking years of enforced 
idleness to set partially right, result from 



266 EDUCATION. 

this prolonged over-exertion of mind. Some- 
times the heart is chiefly affected : habitual 
palpitations; a pulse much enfeebled; and 
very generally a diminution in the number 
of beats from seventy -two to sixty, or even 
fewer. Sometimes the conspicuous disorder 
is of the stomach ; a dyspepsia which makes 
life a burden, and is amenable to no remedy 
but time. In many cases both heart and 
stomach are implicated. Mostly the sleep is 
short and broken. And very generally there 
is more or less mental depression. 

Consider, then, how great must be the dam- 
age inflicted by undue mental excitement on 
children and youths. More or less of this 
constitutional disturbance will inevitably fol- 
low an exertion of brain beyond that which 
nature had provided for ; and when not so ex- 
cessive as to produce absolute illness, is sure 
to entail a slowly accumulating degeneracy 
of physique. With a small and fastidious 
appetite, an imperfect digestion, and an en- 
feebled circulation, how can the developing 
body flourish? The due performance of every 
vital process depends on the adequate supply 
of good blood. Without enough good blood, 
no gland can secrete properly, no viscus can 
fully discharge its office. Without enough 
good blood, no nerve, muscle, membrane, or 
other tissue can be efficiently repaired. With- 
out enough good blood, growth will neither be 
sound nor sufficient. Judge then, how bad 
must be the consequences when to a growing 
body the weakened stomach supplies blood 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 271 

aroused such a feeling. The truth is that, out 
of the many elements uniting in various pro- 
portions to produce in a man's breast that 
complex emotion which we call love, the 
strongest are those produced by physical at- 
tractions ; the next in order of strength are 
those produced by moral attractions; the 
weakest are those produced by intellectual at- 
tractions ; and even these are dependent much 
less upon acquired knowledge than on natural 
faculty— quickness, wit, insight. If any think 
the assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh 
against the masculine character for being thus 
swayed ; we reply that they little know what 
they say when they thus call in question the 
Divine ordinations. Even were there no ob- 
vious meaning in the arrangement, we might 
be sure that some important end was sub- 
served. But the meaning is quite obvious to 
those who examine. It needs but to remem- 
ber that one of Nature's ends, or rather her su- 
preme end, is the welfare of posterity— it needs 
but to remember that, in so far as posterity 
are concerned, a cultivated intelligence based 
upon a bad physique is of little worth, seeing 
that its descendants wiU die out in a genera- 
tion or two— it needs but to bear in mind that 
a good physique, however poor the accompa- 
nying mental endowments, is worth preserv- 
ing, because, throughout future generations, 
the mental endowments may be indefinitely 
developed — it needs but to contemplate these 
truths, to see how important is the balance of 
instincts above described. But, purpose apart, 



272 EDUCATION. 

the instincts being thus balanced, it is a fatal 
folly to persist in a system which undermines 
a girl's constitution that it may overload her 
memory. Educate as highly as possible — the 
higher the better — providing no bodily injury 
is entailed (and we may remark, in passing, 
that a high standard might be so reached were 
the parrot-faculty cultivated less, and the hu- 
man faculty more, and were the discipline ex- 
tended over that now wasted period between 
leaving school and being married). But to 
educate in such manner, or to such extent, as 
to produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat 
the chief end for which the toil and cost and 
anxiety are submitted to. By subjecting 
their daughters to this high-pressure system, 
parents frequently ruin their prospects in life. 
Not only do they inflict on them enfeebled 
health, with all its pains and disabilities and 
gloom; but very often they actually doom 
them to celibacy. 

Our general conclusion is, then, that the 
ordinary treatment of children is, in various 
ways, seriously prejudicial. It errs in defi- 
cient feeding; in deficient clothing; in defi- 
cient exercise (among girls at least) ; and in 
excessive mental application. Considering 
the regime as a whole, its tendency is too ex- 
acting : it asks too much and gives too little. 
In the extent to which it taxes the vital ener- 
gies, it makes the juvenile life much more 
like the adult life than it should be. It over- 
looks the truth that, as in the fo3tus the en- 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 271 

aroused such a feeling. The truth is that, out 
of the many elements uniting in various pro- 
portions to produce in a man's breast that 
complex emotion which we call love, the 
strongest are those produced by physical at- 
tractions ; the next in order of strength are 
those produced by moral attractions; the 
weakest are those produced by intellectual at- 
tractions ; and even these are dependent much 
less upon acquired knowledge than on natural 
faculty— quickness, wit, insight. If any think 
the assertion a derogatory one, and inveigh 
against the masculine character for being thus 
swayed ; we reply that they little know what 
they say when they thus call in question the 
Divine ordinations. Even were there no ob- 
vious meaning in the arrangement, we might 
be sure that some important end was sub- 
served. But the meaning is quite obvious to 
those who examine. It needs but to remem- 
ber that one of Nature's ends, or rather her su- 
preme end, is the welfare of posterity — it needs 
but to remember that, in so far as posterity 
are concerned, a cultivated intelligence based 
upon a bad physique is of little worth, seeing 
that its descendants will die out in a genera- 
tion or two — it needs but to bear in mind that 
a good physique, however poor the accompa- 
nying mental endowments, is worth preserv- 
ing, because, throughout future generatiops, 
the mental endowments may be indefinitely 
developed — it needs but to contemplate these 
truths, to see how important is the balance of 
instincts above described. But, purpose apart, 



272 EDUCATION. 

the instincts being thus balanced, it is a fatal 
folly to persist in a system which undermines 
a girl's constitution that it may overload her 
memory. Educate as highly as possible — the 
higher the better — providing no bodily injury 
is entailed (and we may remark, in passing, 
that a high standard might be so reached were 
the parrot-faculty cultivated less, and the hu- 
man faculty more, and were the discipline ex- 
tended over that now wasted period between 
leaving school and being married). But to 
educate in such manner, or to such extent, as 
to produce physical degeneracy, is to defeat 
the chief end for which the toil and cost and 
anxiety are submitted to. By subjecting 
their daughters to this high-pressure system, 
parents frequently ruin their prospects in life. 
Not only do they inflict on them enfeebled 
health, with all its pains and disabilities and 
gloom; but very often they actually doom 
them to celibacy. 

Our general conclusion is, then, that the 
ordinary treatment of children is, in various 
ways, seriously prejudicial. It errs in defi- 
cient feeding; in deficient clothing; in defi- 
cient exercise (among girls at least) ; and in 
excessive mental application. Considering 
the regime as a whole, its tendency is too ex- 
acting : it asks too much and gives too little. 
In the extent to which it taxes the vital ener- 
gies, it makes the juvenile life much more 
like the adult life than it should be. It over- 
looks the truth that, as in the foetus the en- 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 273 

tire vitality is expended in the direction of 
growth— as in the infant, the expenditure of 
vitaUty in growth is so great as to leave ex- 
tremely little for either physical or mental 
action; so throughout childhood and youth 
growth is the dominant requirement to which 
all others must be subordinated: a require- 
ment which dictates the giving of much and 
the taking away of little — a requirement 
which, therefore, restricts the exertion of 
body and mind to a degree proportionate to 
the rapidity of growth — a requirement which 
permits the mental and physical activities to 
increase only as fast as the rate of growth 
diminishes. 

Eegarded from another point of view, this 
high-pressure education manifestly results 
from our passing phase of civilization. In 
primitive times, when aggression and de- 
fence were the leading social activities, bodily 
vigor with its accompanying courage were 
the desiderata; and then education was al- 
most wholly physical : mental cultivation was 
little cared for, and indeed, as in our own feu- 
dal ages, was often treated with contempt. 
But now that our state is relatively peaceful 
— now that muscular power is of use for little 
else than manual labor, while social success 
of nearly every kind depends very much on 
mental power ; our education has become al- 
most exclusively mental. Instead of respect- 
ing the body and ignoring the mind, we now 
respect the mind and ignore the body. Both 
these attitudes are wrong. We do not yet 

:18 



274 EDUCATION. 

sufficiently realize the truth that as, in this 
life of ours, the physical underlies the men- 
tal, the mental must not be developed at the 
expense of the i^hysical. The ancient and 
modern conceptions must be combined. 

Perhaps nothmg Avill so much hasten the 
time when body andlnind will both be ade- 
quately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief 
that the preservation of health is a duty. 
Few seem conscious that there is such a thing 
as physical morality. Men's habitual words 
and acts imply the idea that they are at lib- 
erty to treat their bodies as they please. Dis- 
orders entailed by disobedience to Nature's 
dictates, they regard simply as grievances: 
not as the effects of a conduct more or less 
flagitious. Though the evil consequences 
inflicted on their dependents, and on future 
generations, are often as great as those caused 
by crime ; yet they do not think themselves 
in any degree criminal. It is true, that, in 
the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a 
purely bodily transgression is recognized ; but 
none api^ear to infer that, if this bodily trans- 
gression is vicious, so too is every bodily 
transgression. The fact is, that all breaches 
of the laws of health are j^hysical sins. When 
this is generally seen, then, and perhaps not 
till then, wfll the physical training of the 
young receive all the attention it deserves. 



THE CELEBRATED 



SORMER 



^ 0!) miSHj, 



\ 







/^Z* HE demands now made by an educated musical public are so exacting that very few 
\fj Piano-Forte Manufacturers can produce Instruments that will stand the test wlilch 
merit requires. SOHMER & CO.. as Manufacturers, rank amongst these chosen 
few, who are acknowledged to be makers of standard instruments. In these days, when 
Manufacturers urge the low price of their wares, rather than their superior quality, as an In- 
ducement to purchase, it may not be amiss to suggest that, in a Piano, quality and price are 
too inseparably joined to expect the one without the other. 

Every Fiano ought to be judged as to the quality of Its tone, its touch, and Its workman- 
ship ; if any one of these is wanting in excellence, however good the others may be, the instru- 
ment will be imperfect. It is the combination of these qualities, in the highest degree, that 
constitutes the perfect Piano, and it is this combination that has given the *' SOHMER" Its 
honorable position with the trade and the public. 

Musical Authorities and Critics prefer the "SOHMER" Pianos, and they are purchased 
by those possessing refined musical taste and appreciating the richest quality of tone and the 
highest perfection generally in a Piano. 

Received First Prize. Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876. 
Received First Prize at Exhibition, Montreal. Canada, 1881 and 1882. 

SOHMER & CO., Manufacturers, 

149-155 JE. 14th St., New Tork. 








Composed of tUe Nerve-Oivlns: Principles of the Ox Brain and 
tlic £mbryo of IVlieat and Oat. 

VITALIZED PHOS-PHITES 

Is a Standard Preparation tvith all JPhysicians 
ivho treat Nervous and 3Ieutal Diseases, ^ 

FORKVLA OX EVBKY LaBEL. 

Crosliy 's Yitalizeil Phos-pliites shonlil lie taken as a Siiecial Brain Fooil 

To BUILD UP worn-out nerves, to banish sleeplessness, neuralgia and 
sick headache. "I have not had a severe headache since I began its 
use, it was my great trouble before." — Dr. Givynn. 

To PROMOTE good digestion. — Dr. Filmore. 

To "STAMP out" consumption. — Di\ Churchill. 

To "completely cure night sweats." — Joh7i B. Quigley. 

To maintain the capabilities of the brain and nerves to perform all 
functions even at the highest tension.— £". L. Kellogg. 

To RESTORE the energy lost by nervousness, debility, over-esfceii/ion 
or enervated vital powers. — Dr. W. Wells. 

T03EPAIR the nerves that have been enfeebled by worry, depression, 
anxiety or deep grief. — 3Iiss Mary Rankin. 

To STRENGTHEN the intellect so that study and deep mental applica- 
tion may be a pleasure and not a trial. — B. M. Couch. 

TO DEVELOP good teeth, glossy hair, clear skin, handsome nails in 
the young, that they may be an inheritance in later years. — Editor 
School Journal. 

To ENLARGE the Capabilities for enjoyment. — National Journal of 
Education. 

To AMPLIFY bodily and mental power to the present generation and 
" prove the survival of the fittest" to the next. — Bismarck, 

To RESTORE lost power and abilities. — Dr. Bull. 

There is no other Vital Phos-phite, none that is extracted 

FROM living animal AND VEGETABLE TISSUES.— Dr. Casper. 
For Sale hy T>rtirjgists, or sent hy 31ail, $1. 

F. CROSBY CO., 56 W. Twenty-fifth St., New York. 



'mm 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 808 529 7 






